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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Identifying Synergies between Industrial
Agglomeration and Ecological
Environment in New-Type Urbanization:
A Collaborative Perspective from
the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China
1
Accounting College, Wuhan Textile University, 430200 Wuhan, China
2
School of Economics and Management, China University of Geosciences, 430074 Wuhan, China
3
Wuhan Railway Vocational College of Technology, 430205 Wuhan, China
4
School of Economics, Wuhan Textile University, 430200 Wuhan, China
Submission date: 2024-07-29
Final revision date: 2024-10-07
Acceptance date: 2024-11-10
Online publication date: 2025-01-27
Publication date: 2026-01-29
Corresponding author
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2026;35(1):485-500
KEYWORDS
industrial agglomerationecological environmentSTIRPAT modelnew-type urbanizationdynamic factor analysis
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Managing environmental problems invited by industrial agglomeration has become a crucial issue
at this stage of the new-type urbanization process. Based on the panel data of prefecture-level cities
in China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2006 to 2018, we used location entropy and dynamic
factor analysis to measure industrial agglomeration and the level of new-type urbanization, respectively.
Then, we used the System Generalized Method of Moments model to examine the dynamic effect
of industrial agglomeration on the ecological environment and synergies between industrial
agglomeration and the ecological environment in new-type urbanization. The findings show that (1)
industrial agglomeration in the current period significantly deteriorates the ecological environment.
Conversely, industrial agglomeration in a lagging period significantly improves the ecological
environment. (2) Population size in a lagging period contributes more to environmental quality than
in a current period. Additionally, technological progress in both current and lagging periods contributes
to improving the quality of the ecological environment. (3) There is a significant synergistic effect
between industrial agglomeration and ecological environment quality in the lagging period of high-level
new-type urbanization compared to the low-level new-type urbanization stage. Meanwhile, regardless
of the level of new-type urbanization, the synergy between industrial agglomeration and ecological
quality is not significant in the current period.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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