Uncovering socio-economic driving forces of volatile organic compounds emissions in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of China

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region is an important urban agglomeration in northern China, which has experienced rapid economic growth and heavy air pollution such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emissions. It is therefore urgent to uncover the socio-economic driving forces of VOCs emissions so that the BTH region can move toward sustainable development. This study aims to fill this research gap by measuring the contributions of different socio-economic factors to VOCs emissions in the BTH region during 2008–2017 by using the generalized Divisia index method (GDIM). Our results show that energy consumption scale and economic scale are the two largest contributors to the increase of VOCs emissions, while emission intensity of output and emission intensity of energy are the two dominant drivers for preventing the increase of VOCs emissions in the BTH region. Other factors, such as population scale, per capita emission, per capita GDP, and energy intensity, have marginal effects on VOCs emissions. These findings provide valuable insights to those policy makers in the BTH region to prepare effective measures to mitigate their VOCs pollution by considering regional disparity. •Key socio-economic drivers of VOCs emissions in China's BTH region are uncovered.•The GDIM method is used, which contains energy, economic, and population factors.•Energy consumption scale and economic scale are top two factors inducing more VOCs emissions.•Emission intensity of output and emission intensity of energy reduced VOCs emissions.•Policy recommendations are proposed to reduce VOCs emissions.