Does population and industrial agglomeration exacerbate China’s pollution?

Abstract

The spatial Durbin model is used to explore the effects of population and industrial agglomeration on production and consumption pollution and spatial spillover differences by using provincial panel data from 2000 to 2018 in China. It is found that industrial agglomeration exacerbates production and consumption pollution within and adjacent to regions, and moderate population agglomeration is conducive to optimizing resource allocation and promoting the sharing of pollution control facilities, which can mitigate production and consumption pollution within and adjacent to regions. Although production pollution is in line with the environmental Kuznets curve, economic growth does not alleviate the consumption pollution brought about by daily life. Consumption pollution is mainly influenced by the consumption level, and everyone is the main subject of pollution. Consumption pollution is much more difficult to manage than production pollution and should be managed from the level of consumption demand.