The Temporal and Spatial Distributions and Influencing Factors of Transboundary Pollution in China

Transboundary pollution between neighboring regions seriously affects the efficiency of overall environmental governance; however, there are few studies focused on how to estimate the degree of transboundary pollution between different regions. With China as a case study, this article developed a new measurement to estimate the degree of transboundary pollution among regions, and comprehensively investigated the influencing factors of transboundary pollution in China between 2000 and 2013. The results indicate that transboundary pollution effects exist in China. In ascending order, the regions most affected overall by transboundary pollution from polluting enterprises were as follows: eastern region < central region < western region. The reduction in transboundary pollution effects was most prominent for severely polluting enterprises in the eastern and western regions and lightly polluting enterprises in the central region. An analysis of the influencing factors reveals that the regional environmental regulation intensity has a negative feedback effect on the transboundary pollution effects. These findings indicate that polluting enterprises in regions with a low environmental regulation intensity are more inclined to operate in border areas to obtain both the environmental benefits associated with the low local environmental regulation intensity and the market economy benefits associated with neighboring urban regions, thereby aggravating environmental pollution in border areas.