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Population Mobility and Urban Air Quality: Causal Inference and Impact Measurement

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  • Fu Huang

    (Yangtze River Delta Economics and Social Development Research Center, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
    School of Economics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China)

  • Qiang Wu

    (Yangtze River Delta Economics and Social Development Research Center, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
    School of Economics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China)

  • Pei Wang

    (Yangtze River Delta Economics and Social Development Research Center, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
    School of Economics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China)

Abstract

This paper treats the lockdown of Hubei Province during the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 as a quasi-experiment, and uses the prefecture-level data of 328 cities in China to identify the causal effects of population mobility and urban air quality. This paper uses the DID model to eliminate the ‘Spring Festival effect’ with data from the same period of the lunar calendar in 2019 as the control group, and finds the reduction in population mobility has a clear causal impact on the improvement of urban air quality. The vast majority of air pollutants decreased, but ozone, which has a special generation mechanism, increased. This paper also constructs 29-day panel data of 328 prefecture-level cities from January to February in 2020 to quantitatively estimate the impact of population flow on urban air quality. After controlling for fixed effects, the results reveal that 1% increases in intra-city and inter-city population flows correspond to respective increases of 0.433% and 0.201% in the urban air quality index. Compared with inter-city flow, intra-city population flow increases air pollution more severely.

Suggested Citation

  • Fu Huang & Qiang Wu & Pei Wang, 2023. "Population Mobility and Urban Air Quality: Causal Inference and Impact Measurement," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(15), pages 1-19, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:15:p:11591-:d:1203771
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Joseph S. Shapiro & Reed Walker, 2018. "Why Is Pollution from US Manufacturing Declining? The Roles of Environmental Regulation, Productivity, and Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(12), pages 3814-3854, December.
    2. Guojun He & Yuhang Pan & Takanao Tanaka, 2020. "The short-term impacts of COVID-19 lockdown on urban air pollution in China," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 3(12), pages 1005-1011, December.
    3. Douglas Almond & Xinming Du & Shuang Zhang, 2020. "Ambiguous Pollution Response to COVID-19 in China," NBER Working Papers 27086, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Fang, Hanming & Wang, Long & Yang, Yang, 2020. "Human mobility restrictions and the spread of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
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