Study On The Regional Differences And Influencing Factors Of Environmental Welfare Performance In Thermal Power Industry

The power industry is an important support for the development of the national economy,and it has an irreplaceable role in meeting the huge energy demand in the process of China’s economic development.Due to financial and technical constraints,the thermal power industry occupies a dominant position in China’s power industry structure.Considering that China’s energy structure is characterized by rich coal and relatively scarce oil and gas resources,this model is unlikely to change in the future.At the same time,due to the large-scale exploitation and use of fossil fuels,polluting gases such as sulfur dioxide（SO₂）and nitrogen oxides（NOx）generated during power generation have caused serious environmental pollution and ecological damage,and threatened human health.In recent years,China’s environmental pollution situation has become increasingly severe,bad weather such as haze and acid rain has occurred frequently.Environmental problems have attracted great attention.The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China established socialist ecological civilization as the foundation of the nation.The green development of the thermal power industry has become the top priority of the harmonious coexistence of the economy and the environment.Effectively coordinating the balanced development between the thermal power industry and environmental protection is undoubtedly a problem that China needs to solve in the future.Environmental welfare performance emphasizes the improvement of higher welfare levels with less investment within the range of environmental carrying capacity.Based on post-welfare economics,considering the welfare factor of the public,it is of great practical significance to study and discuss the environmental welfare performance of the thermal power industry.Based on the Network Data Envelopment Analysis model considering slack variables（NSBM）,this paper calculates and deconstructs the environmental welfare performance of the thermal power industry in 30 provinces in China from 2007 to 2016.The Dagum Gini coefficient and its subgroup decomposition method were used to analyze the regional differences in environmental welfare performance of China’s thermal power industry,and the method of kernel density estimation was used to analyze the dynamic evolution of environmental welfare performance of China’s thermal power industry.Based on this,a threshold panel regression model is constructed to study the influence of financial development on the environmental welfare performance of China’s thermal power industry and other influencing factors on the environmental welfare performance of China’s thermal power industry.The results found that:（1）China’s thermal power industry’s environmental welfare performance is low,and generally shows an approximately"M"-shaped fluctuation trend.From a regional perspective,the western region is significantly higher than the eastern and central regions.From the provincial level,both from the perspective of high efficiency values and low efficiency values,it covers both eastern and inland provinces and cities;from a single-stage efficiency Judging from the above,the environmental efficiency is significantly higher than the welfare efficiency.The decomposition results of regional differences show that the differences between provinces in the three major economic regions of China are slowly fluctuating and rising,and the gap between regions is gradually narrowing.The nuclear density estimation results show that the gap between the environmental welfare performance of the thermal power industry in each region is shrinking,showing an increasing trend.（2）financial development has a single threshold effect on the environmental welfare performance of the thermal power industry in China,with a threshold value of 1.09.When the financial development is less than or equal to the threshold value,financial development has a restraining effect on the environmental welfare performance of the thermal power industry.Limits,the impact of financial development on the environmental welfare performance of the thermal power industry becomes a facilitative effect,showing a"U"-shaped curve.There is also an inverted"U"relationship between P-GDP and the environmental welfare performance of the thermal power industry;the impact of FEE and MC on the environmental welfare performance of the thermal power industry in China is significantly positive;and the MSI and ES have significant negative effects on the environmental welfare performance of the thermal power industry.