Socio-economic driving forces of PM2.5 emission in China: a global meta-frontier-production-theoretical decomposition analysis

PM2.5 is a bad output of China's improved industrialization and rapid economic development, which seriously threatens people's health and greatly hinders the sustainable economic development. Studying the socio-economic driving factors of PM2.5 emissions is of great significance for reducing air pollution and realizing green development. Therefore, based on the simultaneous consideration of space technology differences and time technology progress, this paper constructs an index decomposition analysis-production-theoretical decomposition analysis decomposition model under the global meta-frontier-production theory. Then, we decompose the PM2.5 emission concentration of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2018 into nine driving factors and discuss the impact of different factors from the national, regional, and provincial levels. The results reveal that economic activity is still the main factor to promote the increase of PM2.5 emission, but its effect decreases, while the inhibitory effect of catch-up effect on PM2.5 concentration increases gradually. In addition, economic activities have the greatest impact on the East China, while the time catch-up effect has a more significant impact on the Central and Western China. Moreover, the influence of energy intensity effect, space technology catch-up effect, and time technology catch-up effect is gradually increasing, which have become important factors to inhibit the PM2.5 emission. Based on the above results, we put forward relevant policy suggestions.

Automated summary

Based on the consideration of space technology differences and time technology progress, this study constructs a decomposition model to analyze the driving factors of PM2.5 emissions in China. The results show that economic activity is the main factor promoting the increase of PM2.5 emissions, but its effect is decreasing, while the inhibitory effect of catch-up effect is increasing. Additionally, different factors have varying impacts at national, regional, and provincial levels, and energy intensity effect, space technology catch-up effect, and time technology catch-up effect are increasingly important in inhibiting PM2.5 emissions.