Spatial-temporal evolution of the allometric growth between economic scale and carbon emissions in China's cities and its driving mechanism

Shanggang Yin; Caiquan Bai; Weiwei Xiao

doi:10.1007/s10668-022-02708-6

Spatial-temporal evolution of the allometric growth between economic scale and carbon emissions in China's cities and its driving mechanism

Environ Dev Sustain. 2022 Oct 17:1-34. doi: 10.1007/s10668-022-02708-6. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Shanggang Yin¹, Caiquan Bai², Weiwei Xiao²

Affiliations

¹ College of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, 321004 Zhejiang People's Republic of China.
² The Center for Economic Research, Shandong University, 27 Shanda Nanlu, Jinan, 250100 Shandong People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Exploring the relationship between economic development and carbon emissions is a hot issue of concern to academia. Taking Chinese cities as the research object, this study constructed an allometric growth model of economic scale and carbon emissions to analyze the spatial-temporal evolution of their allometric growth from 2000 to 2017. Additionally, the geographical detector model was used to reveal the driving mechanism of allometric growth. The findings were as follows. (1) The spatial-temporal patterns of economic scale and carbon emissions were dominated by hot spots. Additionally, their size distribution was in an equilibrium stage. (2) The gap between the economic growth rate of Chinese cities and the growth rate of carbon emissions grew, reflecting the remarkable achievements in carbon emission reduction in Chinese cities as a whole. The scaling exponent declined from east to the west during 2000-2008, but showed the opposite trend during 2009-2017. The proportion of cities with negative allometric growth in the sample cities increased from 76.49 to 97.86%. (3) The influence of city investment intensity, energy utilization efficiency, technological development level, social consumption level, fiscal investment level and economic development level on allometric growth gradually decreases. These factors were also the main factors affecting the spatial-temporal heterogeneity of allometric growth. (4) The impact of various factors had a synergetic enhancement effect. These factors can be classified as economic factors, environmental factors and a combination of them. Under the nonlinear coupling of multiple factors, a spatially differentiated pattern of allometric growth was formed.

Keywords: Allometric growth; Carbon emissions; China; Economic scale; Nonlinear coupling.

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