Spatial spillover effects of environmental regulations on China’s haze pollution based on static and dynamic spatial Panel data models

Rapid industrialization and urbanization have presented a dilemma to traditional environmental policies, and severe haze pollution has attracted particular attention in China. This paper employed the exploratory spatial data analysis technique to analyze global and local spatial auto-correlation of environmental regulations (ERS) and haze pollution. Static and dynamic spatial panel data models were further established to investigate the influence of ERS and its spatial spillover effect on haze pollution across 31 provinces of China in 2005-2015. Results showed that significant spatial autocorrelation existed for both ERS and haze pollution in China, forming different aggregation regions in terms of geographical distribution. There was strong evidence for the “inverted-U”-shaped EKC relationship between ERS and haze pollution regardless of whether it was the static or dynamic spatial econometric model. In addition, haze pollution was not only affected by economic growth, population size, and urbanization, but also by the haze pollution in the previous period. Conclusions and control strategies that would be of great significance for implementing effective management measures were synoptically discussed.