Environmental regulation, economic development and air pollution in the cities of China: Spatial econometric analysis based on policy scoring and satellite data

Air pollution has become a key problem to be solved in the process of sustainable development in China. Most existing research on environmental regulation has focused on one dimension or several aspects of environmental regulation. This paper quantitatively scored environmental policies in China from multiple dimensions to construct the index of environmental regulation and used a spatial econometric model and satellite-monitored PM2.5 data for 280 cities in 2002–2016 to analyze the effects of environmental regulation on city air pollution treatment in the country. The empirical results showed that (a) there was a significant positive correlation for the spatial distribution of air pollution in China (0.87 in 2007) and the current air pollution situation was susceptible to the effects of its previous (the time lag effect of urban air pollution in eastern China is the strongest, which was 0.347); (b) environmental regulation could significantly improve the air pollution situation in the cities of northern and eastern regions; (c) the decomposition of the spatial spillover effect confirmed the role of environmental regulation in improving air quality in the region or surrounding areas. (d) we found the inverted U-shaped relationship between city economic development and air pollution in southern cities, the environmental Kuznets curve was verified; In the future, breaking the “barriers” in pollution treatment between regions and strengthening regional conversation and cooperation are effective approaches to treating air pollution. [Display omitted] •We studied the environmental regulation impacts on city air pollution in China.•We quantitatively scored environmental policies from multiple dimensions.•The evolution of city air pollution and its spatial correlation were discussed.•The heterogeneity influence and its spatial spillover effect of environmental regulation were discussed.•The nonlinear relationship between economic development and environmental protection was revealed based on EKC hypothesis.