Metropolitan air pollution abatement and industrial growth: Global urban panel analysis of PM₁₀, PM_2.5, NO₂ and SO₂

ABSTRACT

This study re-scales analysis of global environmental change down to the city-level, where it is becoming increasingly significant, to examine the relationship between air pollution abatement and industrial growth. Treadmill of Production theorists argue that economic growth leads to increased pollution, while Environmental Kuznets Curve research suggests that income increases initially lead to pollution increases, but begins to result in reductions after an economy transitions from manufacturing to services-based industries. We investigate whether growth in specific services industries is associated with pollution abatement in the presence of increasing income. For 96 of the world’s largest metropolitan areas, we test the effects of panel data on income, growth across several services industry sectors and other controls on levels of course particulate matter (PM₁₀), fine particulate matter (PM_2.5), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO₂) and Sulfur dioxide (SO₂) during 2005–2017. We find that reductions of all four air pollutants are associated with local growth in public administration, environmental and health services industry sectors linked specifically to government spending, while pollution increases are associated with growth in manufacturing and mining industries. This affords important nuance to the debate on the reconcilability of economic growth and environmental protection, and on a more spatially granular scale.

KEYWORDS:

• Global cities
• air pollution
• Environmental Kuznets Curve
• services
• manufacturing

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank University of California Irvine librarian Annette Buckley for her invaluable help in sourcing the novel data on global metropolitan pollution and economic attributes, making this study possible.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Deep Blue Data, University of Michigan, at https://doi.org/10.7302/s3nc-wh40, “Benjamin Leffel, Nikki Tavasoli, Brantley Liddle, Kent Henderson & Sabrina Kiernan (2021) Metropolitan air pollution abatement and industrial growth: Global urban panel analysis of PM10, PM2.5, NO2 and SO2, Environmental Sociology, https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/data/concern/data_sets/d217qp73w”

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Income and pollution levels in the sample cities varies too little over the relatively short observed time period to determine either the presence or absence of an EKC. We further observed both individual sample cities and performed separate statistical models regressing income and its square against pollution, yielding no detectable EKC.

2. Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology.

3. PM pollutants are local in nature and cannot necessarily be geographically externalized by off-shoring operations. SO₂ and NO₂ from coal-based electricity generation or final use of electricity could be externalized, however, our data do not allow us to discern this. While this may be managed by the EKC reflecting consumption, no EKC effects are observed in these cities due to the shortness of the observed time period.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Benjamin Leffel

Benjamin Leffel is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from University of California, Irvine.

Nikki Tavasoli

Nikki Tavasoli Hozouri is an Economist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from University of California, Irvine.

Brantley Liddle

Brantley Liddle is a Senior Research Fellow at the Energy Studies Institute at the National University of Singapore and holds a Ph.D. in Management and Civil & Environmental Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kent Henderson

Kent Henderson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at California State University, Bakersfield and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Stony Brook University.

Sabrina Kiernan

Sabrina Kiernan is an Animal Specialist at Grifols Pharmaceuticals and holds a B.S. in Biological Sciences from University of California, Irvine.