ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Spatiotemporal Characteristics and Influencing
Factors of China’s Construction Industry
Carbon Intensity
Qiang Du1, Min Wu2, Ning Wang2, Libiao Bai1
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1School of Economics and Management, Chang’an University, Middle Section of South Second Ring Road,
Xi’an 710064, China
2School of Civil Engineering, Chang’an University,
161 Middle Chang’an Road, Xi’an 710061, China
Submission date: 2017-02-11
Final revision date: 2017-05-03
Acceptance date: 2017-05-03
Online publication date: 2017-09-28
Publication date: 2017-11-07
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2017;26(6):2507-2521
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ABSTRACT
Climate change continuously threatens sustainable development. As the largest energy consumer and
carbon emitter in the world, China is facing increasing pressure to cut carbon emissions. Based on Moran’s
index I and geographically weighted regression, this paper investigates the spatiotemporal characteristics
and the dominating factors of China’s province-level carbon intensity in the construction industry from
2005 to 2014, which is aimed at providing a scientific basis for government while implementing a regionaloriented
carbon emissions reduction strategy. The empirical results are shown as follows. Firstly, carbon
intensity in the construction industry of each province has been decreasing in the past 10 years. Secondly,
provincial carbon intensity in this sector shows significant positive spatial autocorrelation characteristics
and the degree of spatial clustering of carbon intensity tended to weaken in this period. Third, according to
the analysis of the geographically weighted regression (GWR) model, carbon intensity is positively affected
by energy intensity while the labor input and production efficiency both have negative effect. Particularly
the regression coefficient of labor input is almost twice as large as the other two factors. The results reveal
that there is a significant spatial disparity of these three factors in different provinces.