The Influence of Geographical Environment on Public Social Trust: What Role Do Tourism Activities Play?

Social trust is derived from the interaction of environmental and social factors, which has important significance for the sustainable development of society and social governance. In particular, in the post-pandemic era, tourist activity will receive special attention in terms of its role in the development of the public's social trust. On the basis of the sample of big data, this research takes China as an example to study the influences of different geographical and environmental elements on individuals' social trust as well as the common role played by the tourist activity. The research showed that the geographical environment and tourism activities have interacting effects on public social trust. This influencing mechanism is specifically manifested as the rice-growing ratio and tourist reception level can have interacting effects on the social trust of the residents in a tourist destination; pathogen stress and tourist supply level can exert interacting effects on the social trust of the residents in an area from which tourists originate; and economic development and tourist reception level can have interacting effects on the social trust of the residents in a tourist destination. By doing so, this research provides theoretical support and practical suggestions for the recovery of the public's social trust from the perspective of tourism geography in the post-pandemic era.

Revisiting the environmental Kuznets curve: assessing the impact of climate policy uncertainty in the Belt and Road Initiative.

Climate change repercussions such as temperature shifts and more severe weather occurrences are felt globally. It contributes to larger-scale challenges, such as climate change and biodiversity loss in food production. As a result, the purpose of this research is to develop strategies to grow the economy without harming the environment. Therefore, we revisit the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, considering the impact of climate policy uncertainty along with other control variables. We investigated yearly panel data from 47 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) nations from 1998 to 2021. Pooled regression, fixed effect, and the generalized method of moment (GMM) findings all confirmed the presence of inverted U-shaped EKC in BRI counties. Findings from this paper provide policymakers with actionable ideas, outlining a framework for bringing trade and climate agendas into harmony in BRI countries. The best way to promote economic growth and reduce carbon dioxide emissions is to push for trade and climate policies to be coordinated. Moreover, improving institutional quality is essential for strong environmental governance, as it facilitates the adoption of environmentally friendly industrialization techniques and the efficient administration of climate policy uncertainties.

Testing the income-finance-trade-environment nexus based on the ecological load capacity factor: Frequency-domain causality evidence from Nigeria.

To ensure sustainable development, it is crucial that the consumption of ecological resources remains within their productive capacity. This study aims to support policy formulation by examining the nexus between income, financial development, trade openness, and the ecological load capacity factor in Nigeria from 1970 to 2021. The results of the Bayer-Hanck and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds cointegration tests indicate a long-run equilibrium relationship among the variables. Parameter estimations were conducted using the dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) and ARDL model estimators. Both the long-run and short-run results indicate that the ecological load capacity factor has a U-shaped curve with income, thereby validating the load capacity curve hypothesis in Nigeria. The estimated threshold turning points of the curve fall within Nigeria's current range of per capita GDP, which indicates that further increases in income will enhance ecological sustainability. Additionally, the ecological load capacity factor exhibits a negative relationship with financial development and trade openness in the long run. The Breitung-Candelon spectral Granger causality tests reveal that, in the long run, unidirectional causality runs from income and trade openness to the ecological load capacity factor, and bidirectional causality exists in the case of financial development. Furthermore, the tests indicate that none of the causal paths are significant for wavelength periods below four years. Therefore, the study recommends implementing medium-to long-term policy strategies to strengthen the ecological resilience base of the economy.

Revisiting R&D intensity and CO2 emissions link in the USA using time varying granger causality test: 1870∼2020.

R&D intensity, per capita GDP, and per capita CO2 emissions links in the USA over the period of 1870-2020 reflects the evolution of the economic development and technology for the environment benefit. Using Time varying Granger causality, the empirical results indicate both causal links between R&D intensity and per capita CO2 emissions and between per capita GDP and per capita CO2 emissions are time varying. In addition, R&D intensity significantly affects per capita CO2 emissions since 1975, and the per capita GDP significantly influences per capita CO2 emissions since 1978. That is, these findings not only in supportive of the EKC theory, but further disentangle the subtly linkages for the R&D intensity and CO2 emissions and the per capita GDP and CO2 emissions. Finally, the policy implication is that launch the new technical innovation and increase in R&D investment to maintain its sustainable economic growth are the best government strategy to reduce CO2 emissions in the USA.

Determinants of CO2 emissions: exploring the unexplored in low-income countries.

In thirst for economic growth, economies are engaged in anti-environmental activities that drive them towards climate change and CO2 emissions. Extensive CO2 emissions is a serious threat around the globe, especially in low-income countries that can prove detrimental to the environment. To prevent the worst impacts of carbon emission, it becomes necessary to explore the cause of CO2 emissions. In this vein, this work is conducted to evaluate the determinants of CO2 emissions in low-income countries spanning from 2000 to 2020. For estimation of models, panel data techniques are employed. The outcome of the study revealed that trade FDI, urbanization, and GDP per capita are the main contributing factors to environmental degradation. Trade openness has also impacted environmental degradation positively but insignificantly. In contrast, population density and domestic credit to private sector (DCPS) have negatively impacted low-income countries' carbon emissions. The study extended important policy implications to low-income countries' governments and environmental policymakers.

The Determinants of Telehealth Provision: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries.

Health services provided through the telecommunications system aim to improve the population's health and well-being. This research aims to explore what digital, economic, and health factors are associated with the provision of telehealth services, especially in ageing communities. Applying Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries' experiences, this research tries to construct a logistic regression model between adopting a telehealth system or not, a binary outcome variable, and a group of potentially explanatory variables. Estimation results showed that there were thresholds for telehealth provision: The demand for telehealth service usually began when the provision of telecommunication accessibility reached 50%, the proportion of elders exceeded 10%, or the proportion of health spending occupied more than 3-5% of the gross domestic product (GDP); the slope of each variable seemed to correspond with an increase in demand for such a provision. A growing number of individuals in OECD countries are now readily served by telehealth systems under the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings could be regarded as a model for other countries for implementing the necessary infrastructure early on when any of these parameters reaches its threshold. Moreover, telehealth applied in developing countries could be elevated for wider populations to access basic health services and for the remote delivery of health care. A rational decision could be made to appropriately use additional resources in telehealth provision. With accessible e-health services, the population's health could be improved, which in turn would possibly increase productivity and social welfare.

The effect of income inequality on carbon dioxide emissions: A case study of Indonesia.

The main objective of this study was to investigate the effect of income inequality on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Indonesia from 1975 to 2017 using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique. Per capita GDP, urbanization, and dependency ratio are included as additional variables in the analytical models. The statistical estimation and tests showed that income inequality has a negative effect on CO2 emissions but the relationship pattern depends on the level of per capita GDP. An inverted U-shaped relationship was also observed between per capita GDP and CO2 emissions. This indicates the existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) in Indonesia. Moreover, both urbanization and the dependency ratio have a negative effect on CO2 emissions. This study suggests that income equality should be added to the policies formulated to aid economic growth in order to ensure that there is a reduction in CO2 emissions.

Demographic transition and economic growth: Evidence from China and United States.

In the context of todays ageing population, this paper uses the connectedness network model proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz in 2014 to analyse the directionality and degree of interaction between the population ageing index, life expectancy, per capita gross domestic product, and per capita health expenditure from a systematic perspective for China; then, these results from China are compared with the United States. A number of new findings can be identified, as follows: (1) for China and the United States, economic growth may promote the growth of health expenditure and increased life expectancy may cause an increase in the ageing population; (2) China's population age structure has already led to some constraints on economic growth, whereas the United StatesUS's population age structure has had a weak impact on its economic growth; and (3) the ageing population structure for China has a net impact on per capita health expenditure, whereas no such net directional impact was found in the United States. These findings support the idea that policy synergies should be strengthened in the economic, social, and health fields in order to promote both the quality of life of the ageing population and the sustainable development of the economy.

Spatial characteristics and driving factors of global energy-related sulfur oxides emissions transferring via international trade.

Using the logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition methods within the multi-region input-output analytical framework, this paper investigates global energy-related sulfur oxides emissions transferring via trade, so as to reveal spatial characteristics of the pollutant emissions flows, and explores driving factors of the changes of sulfur dioxide emissions embodied in trade (SEET) for 39 major countries for the period 1995-2011. One important finding from this study is that the global SEET mainly flew from developing countries like China to highly developed economies like the U.S., the EU, and Japan. However, of particular concern is that for some countries like Canada and Australia with ample resources and wealthy regions, they had been gradually becoming the net sulfur dioxide emissions exporters in global trade since 1995. Another important finding is that economic development had played a significant role in promoting the global SEET growth, and the expanse of population scale had a slight and positive driving effect on increasing the sulfur oxides emissions embodied in trade for a large proportion of 39 countries, but some coping strategies like improving energy intensity, increasing the proportion of clean energy in the total energy consumption, and optimizing industrial structure could effectively lower the sulfur oxides emissions embodied in trade in a group of 39 countries.

China's cement demand and CO2 emissions toward 2030: from the perspective of socioeconomic, technology and population.

China is the largest cement producer and carbon dioxide (CO2) emitter in the world. The country has attracted too much attention in calculating and comparing its CO2 emissions. However, as the second largest CO2 emitter after the fire power industry, China's long-term cement demand and cement-related CO2 emission projections were not fully studied. The Chinese government, however, committed that by 2020 and 2030, China's per capita GDP of CO2 emissions would be lower than that in 2005 by 40-45% and 60-65%, respectively. In this paper, China's cement demand in 2030 was projected based on the population size, urbanization rate, fixed assets investment, and per capita GDP. Furthermore, decoupling study in China's cement industry was also involved based on the GDP and CO2 emissions during 2001-2015. We also used the diffusion rate of 12 types of CO2 reduction measures and two changed scenarios of clinker-to-cement ratio, to project the cement CO2 emission factors toward 2030 after determining the accounting scope. Meanwhile, the CO2 emissions of China's cement industry through 2030 were projected naturally. The results showed that China's cement output in 2030 will be approximately 2000, 1650, and 937 Mt. based on the fixed assets investment, urbanization rate, and per capita GDP respectively. The projected two scenarios cement CO2 emission factors were resp. 407.83 and 390.02 kg CO2/t of cement which were 42.6 and 45.1% lower than that in 2005. The cement CO2 emissions were projected to be in the range of 366 to 818 Mt. in 2030. Additionally, China's total cement output value has been decoupling from cement CO2 emissions from 2012, which is mainly attributed to eliminating backward capacity, reducing excess capacity or the declining cement output. And decoupling economic from China's cement CO2 emissions may change to be strong or weak decoupling in the near future. As cement production is one of the factors effecting cement CO2 emissions, the most important measure for controlling cement CO2 emissions is a reasonable capacity utilization rate. It is therefore important to control the growth of cement CO2 emissions by regulating the capacity utilization rate within a reasonable range. Eliminating backward capacity, removing excess capacity, controlling new capacity, staggered production, and the "going global" of cement equipment can have great impacts in controlling the total amount of cement output and CO2 emissions.

Regional health-care inequity in children's survival in Zhejiang Province, China.

BACKGROUND: China is now under a period of social transition, and inequity is evident in the field of health care. We aimed to investigate regional health-care inequalities in children's survival in Zhejiang Province, China. METHODS: In our study, monitoring data of Zhejiang Province from 2005 to 2014 was collected. The flow of data collection of community-district-city for urban areas or village-township-county rural areas was followed. The factors affecting equity was analyzed including regional economical level and household registry. We adopted standard measures of concentration curve and concentration index to evaluate degree of income-related inequity and the trend of mortality changes. RESULTS: From 2005 to 2014, overall mortality rate in children under five decreased, and regional disparity reduced markedly, and with a reduced disparity of mortality rate among children from urban and rural areas. In 2014, the mortality rate in children from urban and rural areas was similar. In contrast, the mortality rate in the children from migrant population was more than two folds of that in the children from native residency (7.82 ‰ vs. 3.89 ‰). The mortality rates of newborns (rs = -0.396, P < 0.001), infants (rs = -0.553, P < 0.001) and children under five (rs = -0.568, P < 0.001) were all negatively correlated with per capita GDP in different regions. CI in the newborns, infants and children under 5 years was -0.105, -0.107 and -0.118, respectively. The concentration curve was near to equity curve. The concentration curve was near to equity curve. The mortality rate of children was negatively related with economical level in this study. CONCLUSIONS: The survival status was near to equity. Regional economical development can improve children's survival but it was not the only social determinant. Migrant population will be the future monitor focus for reducing disparity on healthcare and increase equity in children's survival.

Analysis of the relationship between economic growth and industrial pollution in Zaozhuang, China-based on the hypothesis of the environmental Kuznets curve.

In Zaozhuang, economic development affects the discharge amount of industrial wastewater, chemical oxygen demand (COD), and ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N). To reveal the trend of water environmental quality related to the economy in Zaozhuang, this paper simulated the relationships between industrial wastewater discharge, COD, NH3-N load, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita for Zaozhuang (2002-2012) using environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) models. The results showed that the added value of industrial GDP, the per capita GDP, and wastewater emission had average annual growth rates of 16.62, 16.19, and 17.89 %, respectively, from 2002 to 2012, while COD and NH3-N emission in 2012, compared with 2002, showed average annual decreases of 10.70 and 31.12 %, respectively. The export of EKC models revealed that industrial wastewater discharge had a typical inverted-U-shaped relationship with per capita GDP. However, both COD and NH3-N showed the binding curve of the left side of the "U" curve and left side U-shaped curve. The economy in Zaozhuang had been at the "fast-growing" stage, with low environmental pollution according to the industrial pollution level. In recent years, Zaozhuang has abated these heavy-pollution industries emphatically, so pollutants have been greatly reduced. Thus, Zaozhuang industrial wastewater treatment has been quite effective, with water quality improved significantly. The EKC models provided scientific evidence for estimating industrial wastewater discharge, COD, and NH3-N load as well as their changeable trends for Zaozhuang from an economic perspective.

Alcohol-Attributable Fraction in Liver Disease: Does GDP Per Capita Matter?

BACKGROUND: The alcohol-attributable fraction (AAF) quantifies alcohol's disease burden. Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is influenced by alcohol consumption per capita, duration, gender, ethnicity, and other comorbidities. In this study, we investigated the association between AAF/alcohol-related liver mortality and alcohol consumption per capita, while stratifying to per-capita gross domestic product (GDP). METHODS: Data obtained from the World Health Organization and World Bank for both genders on AAF on liver disease, per-capita alcohol consumption (L/y), and per-capita GDP (USD/y) were used to conduct a cross-sectional study. Countries were classified as "high-income" and "very low income" if their respective per-capita GDP was greater than $30,000 or less than $1,000. Differences in total alcohol consumption per capita and AAF were calculated using a 2-sample t test. Scatterplots were generated to supplement the Pearson correlation coefficients, and F test was conducted to assess for differences in variance of ALD between high-income and very low income countries. FINDINGS: Twenty-six and 27 countries met the criteria for high-income and very low income countries, respectively. Alcohol consumption per capita was higher in high-income countries. AAF and alcohol consumption per capita for both genders in high-income and very low income countries had a positive correlation. The F test yielded an F value of 1.44 with P = .357. No statistically significant correlation was found among alcohol types and AAF. Significantly higher mortality from ALD was found in very low income countries relative to high-income countries. DISCUSSION: Previous studies had noted a decreased AAF in low-income countries as compared to higher-income countries. However, the non-statistically significant difference between AAF variances of low-income and high-income countries was found by this study. A possible explanation is that both high-income and low-income populations will consume sufficient amount of alcohol, irrespective of its type, enough to weigh into equivalent AAF. CONCLUSIONS: No significant difference of AAF variance was found between high-income and very low income countries relating to sex-specific alcohol consumption per capita. Alcohol consumption per capita was greater in high-income countries. Type of preferred alcohol did not correlate with AAF. ALD related mortality was less in high-income countries as a result of better developed healthcare systems. ALD remains a significant burden globally, requiring prevention from socioeconomic, medical, and political realms.