Assessment of municipal infrastructure development and its critical influencing factors in urban China: A FA and STIRPAT approach

The varying roles of the dimensions of affluence in air pollution: a regional STIRPAT analysis for Germany

STIRPAT models investigate the impacts of population, affluence, and technology on the environment, with most STIRPAT studies revealing positive impacts of both population and affluence. Affluence is commonly defined as GDP per capita, but investigations of its impact largely neglect the possibility that increasing prosperity affects the environment in varying-even opposing-ways. This study addresses this gap by decomposing affluence into three dimensions-income per taxpayer, private car ownership, and the share of single-family houses-and analyzing their roles in the production of local NO_x emissions. Results for 367 German districts and autonomous cities between 1990 and 2020 indicate that, while private car ownership and single-family houses per capita can be considered drivers of local pollutants, such is not the case for income per taxpayer, which we find has a negative impact on NO_x emissions. The empirical findings suggest that policies should strengthen integrated mobility concepts and establish incentives that favor investment in modern heating or self-sufficiency systems.

Dynamic evolution of urban infrastructure resilience and its spatial spillover effects: An empirical study from China

Urban infrastructure resilience is an important perspective for measuring the development quality of resilient cities and an important way to measure the level of infrastructure development. This paper uses the kernel density estimation, exploratory spatial data analysis, and spatial econometric models to analyze the characteristics of dynamic evolution and the spillover effects of the infrastructure resilience levels in 283 prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2010 to 2019. Our results are as follows. (1) The overall level of urban infrastructure resilience increased. The eastern region had a higher level than the national average. In contrast, the central, western and north-eastern regions had a slightly lower level than the national average. (2) The areas with high and higher resilience levels were mostly cities with more developed economic and social conditions in Eastern China. The areas below moderate resilience levels show a certain degree of clustering and mainly include some cities in Central, Western, and Northeast China. (3) The national level of urban infrastructure resilience shows significant spatial clustering characteristics, and the spatial pattern from coastal to inland regions presents a hotspot-subhotspot-subcoldspot-coldspot distribution. (4) There is a differential spatial spillover effect of national urban infrastructure resilience, which is gradually strengthened under the role of the economy, financial development, population agglomeration and government funding and weakened under the role of urbanization, market consumption and infrastructure investment. By exploring the dynamic evolution of infrastructure resilience in cities at the prefecture level and above and its spatial spillover effects, we provide a scientific basis for avoiding the siphoning effect among cities, improving the level of infrastructure resilience, and guiding the construction and development of resilient cities.

Sustainability assessment using STIRPAT approach to environmental quality: an extended panel data analysis

The consequence of increasing economic activities is observable in the incidence of environmental deterioration. Many studies have explored the precedents of environment quality. In this regard, the proposed stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology (STIRPAT) and environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) analysis are valuable not only for academic analysts, but also for policymakers. This study has focused on 80 selected countries between 1990 and 2017, which confirms the existence of EKC within the STIRPAT framework. The results are estimated with the help of dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS), which controls for the autocorrelation in long periods. According to the estimated results, this study confirms U-shaped EKC based on industrial-, agricultural-, and services-based economic activities. This means that over-reliance on one specific economic activity may harm the environment and create footprint. In this regard, urbanization is responsible for affecting carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, governance and technology are protecting the environment. This quadratic function had classified the sample countries in terms of the degree of sustainability of their economic activity sectors. This study proposes that countries should work on a balanced composition of economic activity so that the lowest possible environmental deterioration is caused.