Effects of industrial agglomeration on haze pollution: A Chinese city-level study

Environmental issues, especially air pollution, have attracted much attention with the development of economy in China. In order to provide a new idea for how to perfect the mechanism of regional joint prevention and control of air pollution, this paper empirically estimates the spatial spillover effect of industrial agglomeration on haze pollution. The results show that the haze pollution has a significant positive correlation with the industrial agglomeration levels in local and neighboring regions. Direct and indirect effects of the industrial agglomeration are all significantly positive, and the latter are much higher than the former. It indicates that the haze pollution is not only affected by the industrial agglomeration in the local region, but also neighboring regions. Furthermore, we find that the direct and indirect effects in central and western China exceed those in eastern China. In addition, the direct and indirect effects of industrial agglomeration in heavily polluting industry are higher compared with non-heavily polluting industry.