Driving forces and relationship between air pollution and economic growth based on EKC hypothesis and STIRPAT model: evidence from Henan Province, China.

The aim of this research is to analyze the main influencing factors and relationship between atmospheric environment and economic society. Using the panel data of 18 cities in Henan Province from 2006 to 2020, this paper employed some advanced econometric estimation included entropy method, extended environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and STIRPAT model to conduct empirical estimations. The results show that most regions in Henan Province have verified the existence of the EKC hypothesis; and the peak of air pollution level in all cities of Henan Province generally occurred in around 2014. Multiple linear Ridge regression indicated that the positive driving forces of air pollution in most cities in Henan Province are industrial structure and population size; the negative driving forces are urbanization level, technical level and greening degree. Finally, we used the grey GM (1, 1) model to predict the atmospheric environment of Henan Province in 2025, 2030, 2035 and 2040. What should pay close attention to is that air pollution levels in northeastern and central Henan Province will continue to remain high.

The Impact of Land Use Structure Change on Utilization Performance in Henan Province, China.

Because of the trends in population growth and rapid industrialization and urbanization, the intensity and structure of land use are undergoing great changes. Henan Province is an important economic province and a major grain producing and energy consumption area, and its land use plays a key role in the sustainable development of the whole of China. This study takes Henan Province as the research object, selects panel statistical data from 2010 to 2020, and discusses the land use structure (LUS) in Henan Province in terms of three aspects: information entropy, analysis of land use dynamic change, and land type conversion matrix. Based on the indicator system "social economy (SE)-ecological environment (EE)-agricultural production (AP)-energy consumption (EC)", a land use performance (LUP) evaluation model was constructed to judge the performance of various land use types in Henan Province. Finally, the relational degree between LUS and LUP was calculated through the grey correlation. The results show that among the eight land use types in the study area since 2010, land used for water and water conservancy facilities increased by 4%. In addition, transport and garden land changed significantly, and was mainly converted from cultivated land (decreased by 6674 km2) and other land. From the perspective of LUP, the increase in ecological environment performance is the most obvious, while agriculture performance is lagging behind; it is worth paying attention to the energy consumption performance, which is decreasing year by year. There is an obvious correlation between LUS and LUP. LUS in Henan Province presents a gradually stable state, and the transformation of land types promotes LUP. Proposing an effective and convenient evaluation method to explore the relationship between LUS and LUP is very beneficial in helping stakeholders to actively focus more on optimizing land resource management and decision making for the coordinated and sustainable development among agricultural, socio-economic, eco-environmental, and energy systems.