Determining whether trade can affect regional environmental sustainability from the perspective of environmental pollution

Abstract

The rising level of environmental pollution in China indicates that the current pattern of economic development is unsustainable. Therefore, ensuring environmental quality places higher requirements on China's economic development pattern from the perspective of sustainability. At the same time, the rapid growth of China's total trade is an important driving force for China's rapid economic development. Based on the trade and environmental quality data of China's 30 provincial administrative divisions, this paper uses a Dynamic Spatial Durbin Model to analyze the environmental quality effects of trade-that is, the composition, technical, and scale effect. Moreover, the environmental quality effects of trade are compared and analyzed in different regions. In this paper, the wastewater discharge and sulfur dioxide discharge are selected as the indicators of environmental pollution. The results show that the scale effect of trade is significantly negative, and that the scale effect is greater than the composition effect. Trade development is conducive to reducing regional environmental pollution. The main impact of trade development on reducing environmental pollution is through economies of scale. The composition effect and technology effect are smaller than the scale effect. The increase in trade in services has helped to reduce the growth rate of pollution emissions. Therefore, expanding service trade and optimizing the trade structure will help to reduce the intensity of pollutive emissions and thereby improve the sustainability of regional economic development.