Quantifying the impacts of socio-economic factors on air quality in Chinese cities from 2000 to 2009

Abstract

Socio-economic factors have significant influences on air quality and are commonly used to guide environmental planning and management. Based on data from 85 long-term daily monitoring cities in China, air quality as evaluated by AOFDAQ-A (Annual Occurrence Frequency of Daily Air Quality above Level III), was correlated to socio-economic variable groups of urbanization, pollution and environmental treatment by variation partitioning and hierarchical partitioning methods. We found: (1) the three<br />groups explained 43.5% of the variance in AOFDAQ-A; (2) the contribution of &ldquo;environmental investment&rdquo;to AOFDAQ-A shown a time lag effect; (3) &ldquo;population in mining sector&rdquo; and &ldquo;coverage of green space in built-up area&rdquo; were respectively the most significant negative and positive explanatory socioeconomic<br />variables; (4) using eight largest contributing individual factors, a linear model to predict variance in AOFDAQ-A was constructed. Results from our study provide a valuable reference for the<br />management and control of air quality in Chinese cities