On the nonlinear relationship between energy consumption and economic and social development: evidence from Henan Province, China.

The sustainable development of China's economy and society has been restricted by energy and environmental issues. With the implementation of the Rise of Central China strategy, Henan, a populous province in China, is facing the threat of an energy shortage as its economy grows steadily and the urbanization process accelerates. Using panel data of 18 cities in Henan Province for the period of 2006-2018, this study investigates the relationship between energy consumption and economic and social development variables based on the extended Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) model and threshold regression method. The empirical results indicate that economic and social development are significantly positively correlated with total electricity consumption, although there is regional heterogeneity in this relationship. Moreover, there is evidence for a nonlinear relationship between economic and social development and urban energy consumption. These conclusions not only promote the healthy and sustainable economic development of Henan Province but also provide a reference for other provinces and cities that are experiencing rapid development in China.

The spatial spillover effect and nonlinear relationship analysis between environmental decentralization, government corruption and air pollution: Evidence from China.

The massive development of the Chinese economy is being hindered by the deteriorating air pollution problem. Many methods have been used by the Chinese government to solve this environmental dilemma, out of which environmental decentralization is one of the important measures. The transparency of environmental decentralization may be weakened by the existence of the corruption problem, resulting in further deterioration of the air pollution problem. To examine this problem, the provincial panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2016 is selected and the spatial measurement method is used to study the relationship between environmental decentralization, government corruption, and air pollution. The results indicate that air pollution in different provinces of China is spatially dependent. Local environmental decentralization has a significant inhibitory effect on air pollution, while local air pollution is not inhibited by neighbor's environmental decentralization. However, air quality is significantly deteriorated by local or neighbor's corruption problem. After adding the interaction item of environmental decentralization and government corruption as the adjusting variable, it is found that the inhibitory effect of local environmental decentralization on air pollution is weakened by the problem of local government corruption, while the government corruption of neighbor does not have this effect. In addition, both local and neighbor's environmental decentralization have heterogeneous effects on air pollution from the spatial dynamic threshold regression results with regional corruption as the threshold variable.

Does environmental pollution inhibit urbanization in China? A new perspective through residents' medical and health costs.

Health problems caused by environmental pollution may affect the process of urbanization in China. Therefore, this study, against the backdrop of promoting new-type urbanization, evaluates the level of China's urbanization comprehensively using the fully arranged polygon graphical index method. It uses a dynamic threshold panel model to study the potential non-linear relationship between environmental pollution (wastewater, sulfur dioxide, and solid wastes) and urbanization under different health costs of residents. Our findings show that environmental pollution has inhibited the improvement of comprehensive urbanization, population urbanization, economic urbanization, and living conditions urbanization, but promoted living environment urbanization, in China. It is worth noting that with the rise in residents' health costs, the inhibiting effect of environmental pollution on comprehensive urbanization, population urbanization, economic urbanization, and living conditions urbanization in China has gradually increased, but on living environment urbanization, it has decreased.