Sustainability, Vol. 11, Pages 1742: Spatial Correlation, Influencing Factors and Environmental Supervision on Mechanism Construction of Atmospheric Pollution: An Empirical Study on SO2 Emissions in China (Sustainability)

In order to study the present situation regarding SO2 emissions in China, problems are identified and countermeasures and suggestions are put forward. This paper analyzes spatial correlation, influencing factors and regulatory tools of air pollution in 30 provinces on the Chinese mainland from 2006–2015. The results of exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) show that SO2 emissions have obvious positive spatial correlations, and atmospheric pollution in China shows obvious spatial overflow effects and spatial agglomeration characteristics. On this basis, the present study analyzes the impact of seven socioeconomical (SE) factors and seven policy tools on air pollution by constructing a STIRPAT model and a spatial econometric model. We found that population pressure, affluence, energy consumption (EC), industrial development level (ID), urbanization level (UL) and the degree of marketization can significantly promote the increase of SO2 emissions, but technology and governmental supervision of the environment have significant inhibitory effects. The reason why China’s air pollution is curbed at present is because the government has adopted a large number of powerful command-controlled supervision measures, to a large extent. Air pollution treatment is like a government-led “political movement”. The effect of the market is relatively weak and public force has not been effectively exerted. In the future, a comprehensive use of a variety of regulation tools is needed, as well as encouraging the public to participate, strengthening the supervision of third parties and building a diversified and all-encompassing supervision mechanism.