Abstract

Public environmental concerns and air pollution have been the subject of previous research, but the interaction effects and spatial factors have not been taken into account in a systematic framework. A spatial panel simultaneous equation approach is used to reduce endogenous interference and the potential impact of spatial factors, and this paper investigates the interaction effect between public environmental concern and air pollution. We find that a 1% increase in public environmental concern will result in a 0.049% decrease in PM2.5 concentration based on balanced panel data from 269 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2017. On the other hand, a 1% increase in PM2.5 concentration will result in a 1.398% increase in public environmental concern. In the meantime, both public environmental concern and air pollution have a significant spatial spillover effect on the surrounding areas.