Research On The Environmental Effect Of Financial Agglomeration From The Perspective Of Spatial Correlation

Finance is the core of modern market economy and an endogenous variable of economic development,financial industry has become the object of competing development in various regions,and the form of agglomeration(financial center)has gradually emerged.On the surface,the agglomeration of financial service industry will gather more people and production activities and consume large energy resources,which seems to produce more serious environmental pollution.In this case,agglomeration development is an ineffective model.However,does the existence of industrial agglomeration effect have the function of reducing emissions? Is financial agglomeration helpful or unfavorable to environmental protection? To answer these questions,this paper takes 286 prefecture-level cities in China as research objects,studies the impact of financial agglomeration on environment.The agglomeration of financial industry and its associated industries can control environmental pollution to a certain extent and has a negative spatial spillover effect,which is the most important conclusion drawn by this article.Specifically,the evolution trajectory of the center of gravity of financial agglomeration and environmental pollution described by the geometric center of gravity method indicates that the centers of financial agglomeration of 286 cities in China are located at the junction of Suizhou and Xinyang,the centers of environmental pollution are all located in Henan Province,and the center of gravity of these two variables shows a trend of moving north or west.Moreover,the spatial exploratory analysis results reveal the positive spatial correlation between financial agglomeration and environmental pollution emissions,and local spatial distribution is mainly characterized by low agglomeration-low pollution and low agglomeration-high pollution types.Further,the spatial panel model is constructed to demonstrate the effect of financial agglomeration on environmental pollution from the perspective of spatial correlation and industrial linkage.The results show that there is an inverted U-shaped between financial agglomeration and pollution emissions intensity,after the inflection point is exceeded,agglomeration will produce a positive environmental externality.The agglomeration of associated industries in the financial sector such as leasing and business services,transportation,warehousing and postal services,and construction has a negative impact on environmental pollution,and the co-agglomeration ofmanufacturing and financial industries also contributes to energy conservation and emission reduction.In addition,financial agglomeration has a positive spatial spillover effect on the intensity of industrial waste-water emissions,while presents a significant negative spatial correlation on the intensity of sulfur dioxide emissions,industrial smoke and dust emissions and pollution emissions concentration.Similarly,the agglomeration of leasing and business services in different regions also has a significant spatial spillover effect on the surrounding environmental pollution.Finally,the levels of financial agglomeration exceeds the critical values 0.5398,0.6593 and 0.5577,the emission intensity of industrial waste-water,sulfur dioxide and industrial smoke and dust can be reduced respectively.And there is a close spatial correlation between different regions.Therefore,increasing the concentration of economic activities,promoting the development of financial agglomeration centers,and focusing on the coordination of environment governance between regions and industries can all contribute to achieving a "win-win" situation of economic growth,industrial optimization and energy conservation and environmental protection.