Verification And Influence Factor Analysis Of Environmental Kuznets Curve In Regional China

Since the Industrial Revolution, rapid economic growth has led to a deteriorating ecological environment. How to achieve coordinating development of economic growth and environmental quality has become a worldwide problem. The environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis can provide a more comprehensive representation of the relationship between the economy and environment, which has aroused extensive attention from scholars. Because of there are differences in development stage, resource endowment and policy guidance between regions of China, the relationship between economic development and environmental quality exhibit significant regional differences. Therefore, verifying the regional Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis and analyzing the trends and factors of EKC are not only playing an important role in the particularity and difference study of China's inter-regional development, but also have great significance in setting policy legitimately and pointedly.Based on EKC theory and provincial panel data from 1991-2013, the EKC of sulfur dioxide emissions in eastern, central and western China were verified in this paper. Also the stability, long-term coordination and Granger causality among variables were tested. Through a comparative analysis of verification results of the regional EKC hypothesis, it can be seen that the panel data of GDP per capita and SO2 emission per capita in regions of China exist a long-term and stable relationship. The relationship between economic growth and environmental quality in regions can meet EKC hypothesis, and are in the right falling portion of the curve. The EKC of eastern and central regions are depicted inverted N shape. However, the EKC of western region fits the traditional U. shape. Besides, there are differences between economic development and environmental quality in regional China. The EKC vertex of eastern, central and western China appeared in the year of 2004,2007 and 2009, respectively. And there is a "lag phenomenon" from the coast to the inland.In addition, the influence factors of Environmental Kuznets Curve of sulfur dioxide emissions in different regions were analyzed. Firstly, based on STIRPAT model, this paper select demographic, technological and policy factors to build semi-parametric regression model through the Matlab software programming. The results show as follows:The energy structure is the most significant factor of sulfur dioxide emissions in regional China, followed by demographic factor and technological factor. The effect of various factors exhibit regional difference. And the demographic factor shows the most obvious effect in central region, while the technical and policy factors cause the greatest influence in the eastern region. Secondly, this paper constructed slope, height and full impact models to analyze shape and trends of the curve for single factor. The results show as follows:The energy structure changed the EKC shape most and followed by urbanization index, indicating that the adjustment of energy structure is the main measure to control sulfur dioxide emissions. While the energy intensity index causes relatively slighter change of the EKC curve, which shows that the technology development in China's regions have not yet played a decisive impact on the control of sulfur dioxide emissions.