ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Temporal-Spatial Pattern and Influencing Factors
of China’s Province-Level Transport Sector
Carbon Emissions Efficiency
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School of Economics and Management, Chang’an University, Middle Section of South Second Ring Road,
Xi’an, Shaanxi, China
Submission date: 2018-06-15
Final revision date: 2018-11-06
Acceptance date: 2018-12-27
Online publication date: 2019-08-09
Publication date: 2019-10-23
Corresponding author
Min Li
School of Economics and Management, Chang’an University
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2020;29(1):233-247
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ABSTRACT
The transport sector, as an industry with high energy consumption and high carbon emissions,
plays an increasing role in achieving the goal of carbon emissions reduction in China. Understanding
the situation of the transport sector’s carbon emissions efficiency and the relevant dominating driving
forces is an important prerequisite for formulating carbon emissions reduction polices. This study
evaluated the transport sector carbon emissions efficiency of 30 provinces in China from 2004 to
2016 using the Super slacks-based measure (Super-SBM) model,which employs Moran’s I indexand
spatial econometric approaches to examine its spatial dependence and the dominating driving factors.
The results are shown as follows. Firstly, the transport carbon emissions efficiency had a noticeable
disparity across the provinces and regions, and the spatial distribution characteristic of transport sector
carbon emissions efficiency could be described as “high in the east and low in the west”. Secondly,
transport sector carbon emissions efficiency presented significant spatial dependence and clustering
characteristics, and the pattern evolutions of spatial distribution presented a path-dependence effect
to some extent. Thirdly, the regression results of the spatial Durbin model (SDM) indicated that the
per-capita GDP and transportation energy consumption structure had significantly positive effects
on transport sector carbon emissions efficiency, whereas the urbanization, transportation intensity,
transportation energy intensity, and transportation service structure hada negative effect on transport
sector carbon emissions efficiency.