Abstract
Excessive delivery of agricultural chemicals seriously threatens the ecology and environment of agricultural areas and restricts the sustainable development of agriculture. The analysis of agrochemical Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) adopting spatial econometric tools is limited. Therefore, this study adopted the spatial panel regression approach to analyze the agricultural chemicals EKC Three Gorges Reservoir Region (TGRR). The results show that (1) both EKC curves of chemical fertilizer and pesticide of the TGRR are inverted U-shaped, and there are 53.8% and 42.3% of the counties/districts did not meet the inflection point of the EKC as regards to chemical fertilizer and pesticide. (2) The EKC of agricultural chemicals of the TGRR are stable, and the variables such as cultivated area and the urban-rural income disparity have impact on the occurrence of the inflection point of EKC. (3) There is the spatial “imitation and convergence” of agricultural chemicals among the counties in the TGRR. The findings indicate that the ecological and environmental situations of agriculture in the TGRR need urgent attention. Countermeasures aiming to alleviate the contradiction between ecological and economic development should be put forward.
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Funding
This study is supported by the following funds and projects: the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (No. 71903184), Manufacturing Industry Development Research Center on Wuhan City Circle, Research Start-up Funding for High-level Talents of Jianghan University (No. 0836001), Funding for Independent Subject of Wuhan Research Institute, Jianghan University (No. IWHS20182018), and Project for Humanities and Social Sciences of Educational Commission of Hubei Province (No. Z2019102910270370); Special Funds for Discipline Construction (Research Start-up Funding for High-level Talents) of China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) (No. 108-162301182733), and the MQ-CSC Scholarship (201606410005) from the China Scholarship Council (CSC) and Macquarie University (MQ), and the Faculty of Science and Engineering of Macquarie University (44724020); the CSC (201706410040) and Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2019M652672). Thank the contribution from Shiwei Jiang, Jia Chen, Xiwen Kang, Yuhao Song, Jipeng Liu, Qingyao He, Lianghui Zou, Min Zhou, Jing Shuai, Juan Huang, Xing Tao, and Bo Wang.
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Yue Liu: Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing – original draft. Xin Cheng: Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Writing – review & editing. Wenjing Li: Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Writing – review & editing.
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Appendix. The results of stationarity test and the choice of model
Appendix. The results of stationarity test and the choice of model
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1.
Results of stationarity test
The panel data model may have unit roots. The variables involved in the general regression model must be stable. Otherwise, it may turn to Pseudo regression. Therefore, it is necessary to verify the stability of the variables before adopting the panel data model to analyze the EKC.
The variables in our model all pass the unit root test, which are integrated of order. After that, we also adopt Pedroni test, Kao test, and Johansen panel cointegration test on the linear, quadratic, and cubic cointegration equations. Results indicate that all the variables rejected the null hypothesis at the significance level of 10%. Therefore, this paper argues that there is long-term stable integration of chemical fertilizer application, pesticide application, and agricultural film usage with per capita GDP of peasants, respectively. The cointegration relationship also provides the necessary preconditions for estimating the EKC equation for agrochemicals.
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The choice of model
The Hausman test was used to determine whether the EKC equation applies to a fixed effect model or a random effect model. From the results of the Hausman test in Table 7, the quadratic and cubic EKC functions of chemical fertilizer application and pesticide application rejected the null hypothesis at the significance level of 5%. Thus, the fixed-effects model is applied to the EKC of chemical fertilizer application and pesticide application.
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Liu, Y., Cheng, X. & Li, W. Agricultural chemicals and sustainable development: the agricultural environment Kuznets curve based on spatial panel model. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 51453–51470 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14294-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14294-7