NEW MODELING RESEARCH ON CONTRIBUTIONS OF ECONOMIC GROWTH TO URBAN TRANSPORT ENERGY COSTS IN CHINA

摘要

Transport is one of the most energy consumption sectors in our society today and the cities in China have significantly fast energy consumption growths now. This study examines the environmental Kuznets curve of transport energy consumption per capita (TEC/C) and gross domestic product per capita (GDP/C} in a panel of 20 cities in China for the period from 2000 to 2016. Moreover, both panel econometric techniques and panel-cor-rected standard error method arc employed in this work when cross-sectional dependence, heterogeneity and autocorrelation exit. The study results show that an inverted U-shaped curve of TEC/C is supported and all the studied cities are on weak decoupling levels over the analysis period. The elasticity values of TEC /C with respect to GDP/ C decrease but the turning points of the environmental Kuznets curves are not reached in any cases. Furthermore, the urbanization rate has a positive effect on TEC/C. However, the population density and the economic structure have negative influences upon TEC/C. Accordingly, effective policies for controlling the transport energy consumptions are proposed.