Abstract
Urban transformation is the key to sustainable urban development. China is currently undergoing massive urban transformation, that is, new-type urbanization. This study explored the relationship between new-type urbanization construction and haze pollution by constructing a time-varying DID model based on 2013–2018 district and county data. Our empirical results show that new-type urbanization can significantly improve haze pollution. We also examined the heterogeneous differences in new-type urbanization’s effects on haze pollution. First, we find that new urbanization construction has no significant effect on haze pollution in cities rich in natural resources. Second, its effect on haze pollution was most pronounced in the eastern region, which had the highest urbanization rate. This study also explored the moderating effect of new urbanization and haze pollution from the urban governance perspective. The results show that the government’s fiscal spending capacity is significant for new-type urbanization’s ability to improve haze pollution. In addition, in the pilot year, the turnover of regional officials enhanced new-type urbanization construction to improve haze pollution. We also find that districts and counties implementing pilot new-type urbanization are conducive to reducing haze pollution in surrounding areas in the same city not implementing new-type urbanization; however, they exacerbate haze pollution in other provincial areas that have not implemented new-type urbanization. Finally, we propose relevant policy recommendations based on the empirical results.
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Data availability
The data and codes presented in this study are available upon request from the corresponding author.
Notes
Because our sample period started in 2013, our model lags behind two cycles. This makes adding a two-way panel fixed effect to the model impossible. Hence, the estimation model in column (2) is actually an OLS estimation controlling the fixed effects of cities.
We do not add the fixed effect of province by time interaction as we do the east–west part group based on provinces.
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All the authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. Conceptualization, Jun Li and Jing Li; methodology, Jing Li; software, Jing Li; validation, Jun Li and Fuda Li; formal analysis, Jun Li; investigation, Jun Li and Jing Li; resources, Jing Li; data curation, Fuda Li; writing—original draft preparation, Jing Li; writing—review and editing, Jing Li and Fuda Li; visualization, Fuda Li; supervision, Fuda Li. All the authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Li, J., Li, F. & Li, J. Does new-type urbanization help reduce haze pollution damage? Evidence from China’s county-level panel data. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 47123–47136 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19272-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19272-1