Impact paths of land urbanization on haze pollution: spatial nesting structure perspective

Haze is considered as one of the direct indicators of environmental pollution, whose generation is closely related to the urbanization and land uses. This paper studied a total of 283 prefecture-level cities in 26 provinces (including autonomous regions) of China. A city–province two-level hierarchical linear model and the mediating effect test method are adopted to analyze the impact path and regional heterogeneity of land urbanization on haze pollution from the perspective of both national and regional scale. The study reveals a significantly positive correlation between the urbanization and the intensification of haze pollution on the national scale, including a clear impact path of Urban_land ⇄ P_income ( Industry ) → AQI . For individual regions, the same impact path is identified. However, the correlations between the urbanization and the intensification of haze pollution vary, resulting in regional heterogeneity. The haze pollution development in the middle and east part of China follows the same general pattern observed on the national level. On the other hand, the urbanization in the east part of China has shifted from solely territory expansion to valuing the sustainable development between economic sector development and the urbanization, resulting in relieving the haze pollution.