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Regional inequality of total factor CO2 emission performance and its geographical detection in the China’s transportation industry

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Abstract

The total factor CO2 emission performance (TFCEP) of transportation industry has received increasing research interests, while existing literature pays little attention to its regional inequality and driving factors. In order to uncover the regional inequality of TFCEP in China’s transportation industry, this paper used Theil index and combined with geographical detector model (GDM) to explore the driving factors and their interactions on TFCEP in Chinese transportation industry. The results revealed that the TFCEP of transportation industry showed a promising increase during 2003–2017 with an annual growth rate of 0.12%, and the improvement was contributed by the technical efficiency change. The TFCEP in the Eastern region performed better than that in the Northeast, Central, and Western region. Regional inequality of TFCEP did exist and exhibited an obvious downward trend. The within-region inequality had a greater impact on the inequalities than between region. Freight turnover was the main driving factor of TFCEP in the transportation industry, followed by the energy intensity and per-capita GDP. In the Eastern and Western regions, freight turnover had the greatest impact on TFCEP, while in the Central and Northeastern regions, urbanization rate and energy intensity were the dominant factors, respectively. The interactions between energy intensity and freight turnover were highly influential. This paper provides important insights for different regions to formulate targeted carbon emission reduction policies.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

DMU:

Decision-making unit

PPS:

Production possibility set

ML index:

Malmquist–Luenberger productivity index

GML index:

Global Malmquist–Luenberger productivity index

TFCEP:

Total factor CO2 emission performance

TC:

Technical change index

EC:

Technical efficiency change index

GDM:

Geographic detector model

EI:

Energy intensity

GDP:

Gross domestic product

PGDP:

Per-capita GDP

POP:

Population

UR:

Urbanization rate

FT:

Freight turnover

PT:

Passenger turnover

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Funding

This work was supported by Youth Innovation Promotion Association, Chinese Academy of Sciences [grant number 2020201].

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, People’s Republic of China

    Li Wang & Yanfei Zhao

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, People’s Republic of China

    Li Wang & Yanfei Zhao

  3. Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, People’s Republic of China

    Jiaoyue Wang

  4. Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, People’s Republic of China

    Jiahui Liu

Authors
  1. Li Wang
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  2. Yanfei Zhao
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  3. Jiaoyue Wang
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  4. Jiahui Liu
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Contributions

Li Wang: Conceptualization; Methodology; Data curation; Writing, original draft preparation; Visualization; Writing, reviewing and editing. Yanfei Zhao: Formal analysis; Investigation; Methodology; Writing, reviewing and editing. Jiaoyue Wang: Conceptualization; Supervision; Funding acquisition; Writing, reviewing and editing. Jiahui Liu: Data curation; Methodology; Software; Validation; Visualization; Writing, original draft preparation. All authors have read and approved the paper.

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Correspondence to Jiaoyue Wang or Jiahui Liu.

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Wang, ., Zhao, Y., Wang, J. et al. Regional inequality of total factor CO2 emission performance and its geographical detection in the China’s transportation industry. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 3037–3050 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15613-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15613-8

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