Effects of Population and Land Urbanization on China’s Environmental Impact: Empirical Analysis Based on the Extended STIRPAT Model

Abstract

Abstract:China has been undergoing a very rapid but unbalanced urbanization, characterized by under-urbanization of its population and faster urbanization of the land. In such a situation, the urbanization of the population and the land may produce different effects on the natural environment. In addition, due to substantial inter-regional differences, the influence of urbanization on the environment is likely to vary across regions at different stages of economic and social development. This article expands the basic STIRPAT-Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology, model by adding industrialization level, foreign trade degree, population urbanization level and land urbanization level. Based on panel data from 2006 to 2014 and using this extended STIRPAT model, the article analyses the effects of the driving forces, especially population urbanization and land urbanization, on the environmental impact for the whole of China as well as on its eastern, middle and western regions. The results indicate that for the whole of China, population urbanization produces a significant negative effect on the environmental impact, while land urbanization has a small, but not statistically significant, positive effect. The effects of population urbanization and land urbanization vary across the eastern, middle and western regions, which are at different stages of economic and social development. Population urbanization and land urbanization have no significant influences on environmental impact in the eastern and middle regions, while in the western region population urbanization has a significant negative influence on environmental impact. The main driving factors of environmental impact remain population, affluence and energy intensity. This study also quantitatively calculates the actual contribution rate of each driving force for the 2006-2014 period. It contributes to understanding the characteristics and key driving forces in each region, allowing for appropriate policy recommendations.

Impacts of Urban Sprawl on Soil Resources in the Changchun–Jilin Economic Zone, China, 2000–2015

“…The study area witnessed unprecedented rapid urban land development since the implementation of the policy of revitalizing Northeast China. From2000 to 2015, the annual expanding rate of urban land in the CJEZ (3.23%) was higher than the mean value of the Northeast China (2.09%, during 2000 to 2010) and the whole country (2.75%, during 2000 to 2010; 2.15%, during 2006 to 2014), but lower than that of the middle region of China (5.44%, during 2000 to 2010; 4.68%, during 2006 to 2014) [ 16 , 36 ].…”

Quantitative Analysis of the Coupling Coordination Degree Between Urbanization and Eco-environment in Mongolia

“…The relationship between urbanization and the eco-environment is a complex interactive coupling and coercing relationship (Qiao and Fang, 2005;Xu et al, 2018). A large number of research have used various methods to investigate the coupling between urbanization and the eco-environment, such as Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) (Xia et al, 2014;Xu et al, 2018;Lin and Zhu, 2018), Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STIRPAT) (Lin et al, 2017;Effiong, 2018), Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) (Ding and Li, 2017), Orthogonal Least Square (OLS) (Azam and Khan, 2016;Yazdi and Shakouri, 2018) and Coupling Coordination Degree (CCD) (Tang et al, 2017;Zhao et al, 2017;Haseeb et al, 2017). However, the STIRPAT, LMDI and OLS are dedicated to the single-direction influence of urbanization and other driving forces on the eco-environment.…”

Does Population Mobility Contribute to Urbanization Convergence? Empirical Evidence from Three Major Urban Agglomerations in China

“…Permanent resident refers to the population living at home all years or more than 6 months, which is the actual population in an administrative area, including those who have household registration and are actually living there (registered population), as well as those who do not have household registration but are actually living there (floating population); while registered population means the population who has a household registration and actually lives in the administrative area, in which the seat of the household registration is consistent with the place of residence [9]. Due to the different statistical ranges of urban population under different population indicators, there are also two different measures of urbanization rate in China: one is to measure the proportion of urban registered population to the total population [51]; another is to measure the proportion of urban permanent residents to the total population [52]. Notably, the first method generally underestimates the level of urbanization in various regions.…”