Sustainability of Urbanization, Non-Agricultural Output and Air Pollution in the World’s Top 20 Polluting Countries

Multiscale Impact of Environmental and Socio-Economic Factors on Low Physical Fitness among Chinese Adolescents and Regionalized Coping Strategies

As low physical fitness in adolescents increases their risk of all-cause mortality in future adulthood as well as regional public health budgets, many scholars have studied the factors influencing physical fitness in adolescents. However, the spatial non-stationarity and scale between physical fitness and influencing factors in adolescents are often neglected. To rectify this situation, this study constructed a multi-scale geographically weighted regression model based on data from the China National Student Fitness Survey and the China Statistical Yearbook in 2018 to investigate the spatial patterns of factors influencing low physical fitness among adolescents. The results showed that the influencing factors for measuring the physical fitness of Chinese adolescents had significant spatial heterogeneity and multi-scale effects. The local R² values were relatively low in the western region of China. Consideration should be given to increasing the lifestyle and ethnic and cultural characteristics of local residents when selecting influencing factors in the future. The physical fitness of men was mainly influenced by socio-economic factors, while that of women was influenced by natural environmental factors. According to the different spatial distribution patterns of MGWR, this study suggests that each region should develop regionalized strategies to cope with the low physical fitness of adolescents, including taking advantage of the natural environment to develop physical fitness promotion projects, accelerating the upgrading of industrial structures in the north-eastern and western regions, and the need to remain cautious of rapid urbanization in the east.

Nexus between Housing Price and Magnitude of Pollution: Evidence from the Panel of Some High- and-Low Polluting Cities of the World

With the growing environmental pollution and adverse climatic conditions, it is now a globally vibrant topic whether housing prices should be associated with the quality of the environment in a particular region. From the microeconomic approach to environmental economics, it is proposed that property prices in any region should be associated with the environmental quality-the concept of hedonic pricing. A negative association between low magnitudes of pollution and high house prices is a precondition to achieving the aim of sustainable development. The study thus starts with the objective of investigating whether there are long-term relations and short-term dynamics between the magnitudes of pollution and house price in the panel of the world’s high-polluting and low-polluting cities for the period of 2012–2021 across 30 cities. Using appropriate time-series econometric procedures such as panel cointegration, panel VECM, and the Wald Test, the study arrives at the conclusion that magnitudes of pollution and house prices in the cities are cointegrated with a stable long-term relationship in all panels. Further, there are strong causal interplays in both the long- and short-term between pollution and house prices in most of the panels of the cities. Thus, policy makers should consider making proper valuations of environmental services to control pollution at the city levels first and then at global levels to reach the proposed goal of sustainable development.