| The healthy development of ecological environment plays a vital role in the sustainable development of mankind.Since the reform and opening up,China’s economy has been developing rapidly,while the ecological and environmental problems have become more and more serious.Large quantities of waste water and hazardous waste are produced during the process,both of which are the main causes of the environmental pollution crimes.Due to the different level of social and economic development,there are regional differences in the occurrence of environmental pollution crimes.Therefore,taking environmental pollution crimes as the object of study,exploring its influenc ing factors is helpful to recognize the temporal and spatial characteristics and formation mechanism of environmental pollution crimes in our country,and thus to adopt the effective preventive measures.In this study,a complete system of methods to identify the temporal and spatial characteristics of environmental pollution crimes was established and applied to 30provinces(municipalities)in China to explore the influencing factors of environmental pollution crimes and their regional differences.Firstly,the data of environmental pollution crimes were collected by using the database of China Judicial Documents Network,and divided into two categories of environmental pollution crimes of water pollution and hazardous waste according to their contents.Then the temporal changes of these two categories were analyzed,and the changes of spatial autocorrelation degree of environmental pollution crimes in different regions were discussed through spatial autocorrelation analysis.Secondly,the temporal LMDI decomposition analysis method was used to identify the influencing factors of two categories of environmental pollutio n crimes and quantify their contributions to the temporal change of environmental pollution crimes.Finally,the spatial LMDI decomposition analysis method was used to explore the spatial differences of the influencing factors of environmental crimes of water pollution and hazardous waste in three specific years.The results showed that:(1)the number of environmental pollution crimes cases were concentrated significantly among regions,mainly coastal and economically developed areas.In Guangdong,Shandong,Hebei,Jiangsu and Zhejiang,five of major economic provinces in our country,the number was significantly higher than the national average level.Between 2016 and 2020,6,004 cases of environmental pollution crimes were reported in the five provinces,accounting for 67 percent of the total number of cases for the whole country in the five years.Hainan,Ningxia,Xinjiang,Qinghai and Gansu,the provinces with relatively backward industrial development,however,had a relatively lower number of environmental pollution crimes,with 74 cases in the five regions in total between 2016 and 2020,accounting for less than 1 percent of the total number of cases.(2)The number of environmental crime cases of water pollution continued to increase from the year of 2016 to 2018,and then decreased after reaching the peak of 1304 cases in the year of 2018 until the last research year,2020.As for the environmental pollution cases of hazardous waste,the number increased from the year of 2016 to 2019,with the peak value of 1119,then decreased in 2020.(3)The results of spatial autocorrelation analysis showed that the eastern region had a high-high aggregation effect,the northwestern region had a low-low aggregation effect,and the city of Beijing,Tianjin and Shanghai had a low-high aggregation effect.(4)The temporal LMDI decomposition results show that the increase of crime rate would promote the occurrence of environmental pollution crimes,and the increase of economic development would also aggravate the occurrence of environmental pollution crimes.Similarly,the increase of population density would also lead to the increase of the number of environmental pollution crimes.But reducing economic emission intensity and the discharge of pollutants,that is,the implementation of total quantity control could effectively restrain the occurrence of environmental pollution crimes and the reduction of unemployment also had a positive effect on controlling the rise of the number of environmental pollution crimes.(5)The number of environmental pollution crimes of water pollution and hazardous waste in Hebei,Shandong,Jiangsu,Zhejiang and Guangdong significantly exceeded the national average level.Guangdong,Zhejiang and Jiangsu were affected by population density,while Shandong,Hebei and Guangdong were affected by the level of economic development.Moreover,the unemployment rate and the number of people out of work played a bigger role in areas with larger populations.This study explores the spatial and temporal patterns and influencing factors of environmental pollution offences,ilustrates the patterns of temporal changes and spatial distribution characteristics of environmental pollution offences,identifies the contribution of key socio-economic factors to environmental pollution offences,and this study can provide better decision support for national and regional control policies against environmental pollution offences from a geographical perspective as well as from the perspective of overall socio-economic influencing factors. |
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