Pollution Emissions and Economic Growth Revisited: A Novel Model of Spatial Hyperbolic Decomposition in Sewage Reduction Risk Management

The turning point in the classic environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) fails to identify the pollution risk transfer effect. Based on the interactions of environmental regulations among local governments, this paper decomposes the relationship between sewage emissions and the economic growth depicted by the pollution risk transfer effect and proposes a spatial hyperbolic model to illustrate this relationship in local and other regions. The results show that the relationship between industrial sewage emissions and economic growth presents an inverted U-shaped curve in the local region and a U-shaped curve in other regions. The turning point of the inverted U-shaped curve in the hyperbola lags behind that in the EKC, indicating that the turning point in the EKC is influenced by the pollution risk transfer effect. The turning point of the inverted U-shaped curve lags behind that of the U-shaped curve in the hyperbola, indicating that pollution transfer behavior has become the main choice under environmental regulation. Based on this conclusion, this paper suggests that the central government should optimize the assessment standards of local government achievements and should encourage enterprises to engage in technological innovation using market incentive environmental regulation.