IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolec/v195y2022ics0921800922000568.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The unequal exchange of air pollution and economic benefits embodied in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei's consumption

Author

Listed:
  • Du, Huibin
  • Liu, Huiwen
  • Zhang, Zengkai

Abstract

China's most critically air polluted area, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region has attracted significant attention; the regional linkage of environmental indicators in BTH has been widely studied in recent years. The city-level air pollutants and economic benefits hidden in trade activities are still poorly understood. This paper examines air pollutants and economic benefits embodied in BTH's consumption based on a city-level input-output table. Our results show that transfer flows of air pollutants and value-added between different cities lead to the unequal exchange of air pollution and economic benefits in BTH. Beijing gains more value-added (38.40%) through trade compared with its atmospheric pollutant equivalents (APE, 1.75%) induced by consumption demand in BTH. Conversely, Tangshan, Shijiazhuang, and Handan emit more air pollutants compared with the benefits they gain through trade. The results provide evidence for the establishment of compensation mechanisms between cities.

Suggested Citation

  • Du, Huibin & Liu, Huiwen & Zhang, Zengkai, 2022. "The unequal exchange of air pollution and economic benefits embodied in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei's consumption," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:195:y:2022:i:c:s0921800922000568
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107394
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800922000568
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107394?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nabernegg, Stefan & Bednar-Friedl, Birgit & Muñoz, Pablo & Titz, Michaela & Vogel, Johanna, 2019. "National Policies for Global Emission Reductions: Effectiveness of Carbon Emission Reductions in International Supply Chains," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 146-157.
    2. Druckman, Angela & Jackson, Tim, 2009. "The carbon footprint of UK households 1990-2004: A socio-economically disaggregated, quasi-multi-regional input-output model," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 2066-2077, May.
    3. Zhifu Mi & Jiali Zheng & Jing Meng & Jiamin Ou & Klaus Hubacek & Zhu Liu & D’Maris Coffman & Nicholas Stern & Sai Liang & Yi-Ming Wei, 2020. "Economic development and converging household carbon footprints in China," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 3(7), pages 529-537, July.
    4. Zhifu Mi & Jing Meng & Dabo Guan & Yuli Shan & Malin Song & Yi-Ming Wei & Zhu Liu & Klaus Hubacek, 2017. "Chinese CO2 emission flows have reversed since the global financial crisis," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 8(1), pages 1-10, December.
    5. Rivera-Basques, Luisa & Duarte, Rosa & Sánchez-Chóliz, Julio, 2021. "Unequal ecological exchange in the era of global value chains: The case of Latin America," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    6. Wang, Saige & Chen, Bin, 2016. "Energy–water nexus of urban agglomeration based on multiregional input–output tables and ecological network analysis: A case study of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 773-783.
    7. Li, Xian & Yang, Lili & Zheng, Heran & Shan, Yuli & Zhang, Zongyong & Song, Malin & Cai, Bofeng & Guan, Dabo, 2019. "City-level water-energy nexus in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 235(C), pages 827-834.
    8. Hongmei Zheng & Brian D. Fath & Yan Zhang, 2017. "An Urban Metabolism and Carbon Footprint Analysis of the Jing–Jin–Ji Regional Agglomeration," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 21(1), pages 166-179, February.
    9. Qiang Zhang & Xujia Jiang & Dan Tong & Steven J. Davis & Hongyan Zhao & Guannan Geng & Tong Feng & Bo Zheng & Zifeng Lu & David G. Streets & Ruijing Ni & Michael Brauer & Aaron van Donkelaar & Randall, 2017. "Transboundary health impacts of transported global air pollution and international trade," Nature, Nature, vol. 543(7647), pages 705-709, March.
    10. Dorninger, Christian & Hornborg, Alf & Abson, David J. & von Wehrden, Henrik & Schaffartzik, Anke & Giljum, Stefan & Engler, John-Oliver & Feller, Robert L. & Hubacek, Klaus & Wieland, Hanspeter, 2021. "Global patterns of ecologically unequal exchange: Implications for sustainability in the 21st century," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    11. Lévay, Petra Zsuzsa & Vanhille, Josefine & Goedemé, Tim & Verbist, Gerlinde, 2021. "The association between the carbon footprint and the socio-economic characteristics of Belgian households," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    12. Xu, Yan & Dietzenbacher, Erik & Los, Bart, 2020. "International trade and air pollution damages in the United States," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    13. Cui, Lianbiao & Duan, Hongbo & Mo, Jianlei & Song, Malin, 2021. "Ecological compensation in air pollution governance: China's efforts, challenges, and potential solutions," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    14. Yu, Yang & Hubacek, Klaus & Feng, Kuishuang & Guan, Dabo, 2010. "Assessing regional and global water footprints for the UK," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 1140-1147, March.
    15. Tunç, Gül İpek & Akbostancı, Elif & Türüt-Aşık, Serap, 2022. "Ecological unequal exchange between Turkey and the European Union: An assessment from value added perspective," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    16. Zhao, Hongyan & Zhang, Qiang & Huo, Hong & Lin, Jintai & Liu, Zhu & Wang, Haikun & Guan, Dabo & He, Kebin, 2016. "Environment-economy tradeoff for Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei’s exports," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 926-935.
    17. Lan Yang & Yutao Wang & Ranran Wang & Jiří Jaromír Klemeš & Cecília Maria Villas Bôas de Almeida & Mingzhou Jin & Xinzhu Zheng & Yuanbo Qiao, 2020. "Environmental-social-economic footprints of consumption and trade in the Asia-Pacific region," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 11(1), pages 1-9, December.
    18. Su, Bin & Ang, B.W., 2013. "Input–output analysis of CO2 emissions embodied in trade: Competitive versus non-competitive imports," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 83-87.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xu, Shuhua & Sun, Chuanwang & Wei, Haoyu & Hou, Xinshuo, 2023. "Road construction and air pollution: Analysis of road area ratio in China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 351(C).
    2. Liu, Haiyue & Wang, Yile & Shi, Xiaoshuang & Pang, Lina, 2022. "How do environmental policies affect capital market reactions? Evidence from China's construction waste treatment policy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yang, Xue & Su, Bin, 2019. "Impacts of international export on global and regional carbon intensity," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 253(C), pages 1-1.
    2. Zhao, Mengxue & Yuan, Zhihang & Chan, Hon S., 2023. "Housing wealth and household carbon emissions: The role of homeownership in China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    3. Jiang, Lei & He, Shixiong & Zhong, Zhangqi & Zhou, Haifeng & He, Lingyun, 2019. "Revisiting environmental kuznets curve for carbon dioxide emissions: The role of trade," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 245-257.
    4. Zhang, Yimeng & Wang, Feng & Zhang, Bing, 2023. "The impacts of household structure transitions on household carbon emissions in China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    5. Wang, Keying & Cui, Yongyan & Zhang, Hongwu & Shi, Xunpeng & Xue, Jinjun & Yuan, Zhao, 2022. "Household carbon footprints inequality in China: Drivers, components and dynamics," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    6. Shen, Jijie & Yi, Peng & Zhang, Xumin & Yang, Yuantao & Fang, Jinzhu & Chi, Yuanying, 2023. "Can water conservation and energy conservation be promoted simultaneously in China?," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 278(PA).
    7. Wang, Jiayu & Wang, Ke & Hubacek, Klaus & Feng, Kuishuang & Shan, Yuli & Wei, Yi-Ming, 2025. "Changes in global trade patterns increase global inequality towards Sustainable Development Goals," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    8. Wei, Long & Li, Wenjing & Jin, Zhida, 2024. "Global value chains participation and trade-induced carbon inequality: A comparative analysis of developed and developing economies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    9. Rui Huang & Klaus Hubacek & Kuishuang Feng & Xiaojie Li & Chao Zhang, 2018. "Re-Examining Embodied SO 2 and CO 2 Emissions in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-17, May.
    10. Zhang, Haoran & Li, Ruixiong & Cai, Xingrui & Zheng, Chaoyue & Liu, Laibao & Liu, Maodian & Zhang, Qianru & Lin, Huiming & Chen, Long & Wang, Xuejun, 2022. "Do electricity flows hamper regional economic–environmental equity?," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 326(C).
    11. Yan Li & Yigang Wei & Hanxiao Xu & Huanwen Liu & Julien Chevallier, 2023. "Carbon monoxide and multi‐pollutants flow between China and India: A multiregional input–output model," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(8), pages 2514-2537, August.
    12. Pottier, Antonin, 2022. "Expenditure elasticity and income elasticity of GHG emissions: A survey of literature on household carbon footprint," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    13. Pottier, Antonin & Combet, Emmanuel & Cayla, Jean-Michel & de Lauretis, Simona & Nadaud, Franck, 2021. "Who emits CO2 ? Landscape of ecological inequalities in France from a critical perspective," FEEM Working Papers 311053, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    14. Tunç, Gül İpek & Akbostancı, Elif & Türüt-Aşık, Serap, 2022. "Ecological unequal exchange between Turkey and the European Union: An assessment from value added perspective," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    15. Zhang, Yun-Long & Liu, Lan-Cui & Kang, Jia-Ning & Peng, Song & Mi, Zhifu & Liao, Hua & Wei, Yi-Ming, 2024. "Economic feasibility assessment of coal-biomass co-firing power generation technology," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 296(C).
    16. Liang, Longwu & Chen, Mingxing & Zhang, Xiaoping & Sun, Mingxing, 2024. "Understanding changes in household carbon footprint during rapid urbanization in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    17. Jiang, Meihui & An, Haizhong & Guan, Qing & Sun, Xiaoqi, 2018. "Global embodied mineral flow between industrial sectors: A network perspective," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 192-201.
    18. Meng, Fanxin & Wang, Dongfang & Meng, Xiaoyan & Li, Hui & Liu, Gengyuan & Yuan, Qiuling & Hu, Yuanchao & Zhang, Yi, 2022. "Mapping urban energy–water–land nexus within a multiscale economy: A case study of four megacities in China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(PB).
    19. Li, Jia Shuo & Zhou, H.W. & Meng, Jing & Yang, Q. & Chen, B. & Zhang, Y.Y., 2018. "Carbon emissions and their drivers for a typical urban economy from multiple perspectives: A case analysis for Beijing city," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 226(C), pages 1076-1086.
    20. Althouse, Jeffrey & Cahen-Fourot, Louison & Carballa-Smichowski, Bruno & Durand, Cédric & Knauss, Steven, 2023. "Ecologically unequal exchange and uneven development patterns along global value chains," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:195:y:2022:i:c:s0921800922000568. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.