Environmental Kuznets curve on water pollution in Chinese provinces

This study, focusing on the water pollutions in terms of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia nitrogen by industrial and household discharges in Chinese provinces, investigates the contribution of capacity shortage for pollution control to the provincial pollution levels, by conducting a factor analysis to the heterogeneity of provincial pollutions under the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) framework. The study’s contribution to the literature lies in its framework of analyzing the heterogeneity of Chinese provinces’ EKCs in terms of their positions (not their shapes) by using a fixed-effect model to extract the province-specific pollution effects. The main finding of this study is that the capacity shortage for pollution control accounts for around 30% as a pollution factor of industrial COD and ammonia nitrogen, and accounts for around 60% and 80% as a pollution factor of household COD and ammonia nitrogen, respectively. It suggests that China has still much policy space and room to mitigate the water pollutions, by building the capacity for pollution control through developing human resources and training them.