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Causal complexity of environmental pollution in China: a province-level fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

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Abstract

Environmental problems are endowed with the causal complexity of multiple factors. Traditional quantitative research on the influencing mechanism of environmental pollution has tended to focus on the marginal effects of specific influencing factors but generally neglected the multiple interaction effects between factors (especially three or more). Based on the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces between 2011 and 2020, this study employs fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) — which can provide a fine-grained insight into the causal complexity of environmental issues — to shed light on the influencing mechanism of environmental pollution. The results show that there are several different configurations of pollution drivers which lead to high pollution or low pollution in provinces, confirming the multiple causality, causal asymmetry, and equifinality of environmental pollution. Furthermore, the combination effect of advanced industrial structure, small population size, and technological advance is significant in achieving a state of green environment compared to environmental regulation factors. In addition, spatiotemporal analysis of the configurations indicates that strong path dependencies and spatial agglomeration exist in current local environmental governance patterns. Finally, according to our findings, targeted policy recommendations are provided.

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Data availability

The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express their sincere gratitude to the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (no. 2021CDJSKJC20 and 2021CDJSKCG28), the Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 72071022 and 71801023), Chongqing Science & Technology Commission (no. cstc2020jscx-msxmX0036) for funding this research project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management Science and Real Estate, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400045, China

    Yang Chen, Jingke Hong, Miaohan Tang, Yuxi Zheng & Maoyue Qiu

  2. Tan Kah Kee College, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

    Danfei Ni

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  1. Yang Chen
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  2. Jingke Hong
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Contributions

Yang Chen: conceptualization, methodology, writing — original draft, and writing — review and editing. Jingke Hong: conceptualization and writing — review and editing. Miaohan Tang: data analysis and resources. Yuxi Zheng: visualization. Maoyue Qiu: software. Danfei Ni: writing — review and editing.

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Correspondence to Jingke Hong.

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Communicated by Baojing Gu.

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Table 8 Abbreviations of regions
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Chen, Y., Hong, J., Tang, M. et al. Causal complexity of environmental pollution in China: a province-level fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 15599–15615 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22948-3

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