An Empirical Study on China’s Regional Carbon Emissions of Agriculture

2. Literature Review

Carbon emissions have received wide attentions and researches in academic field. The carbon dioxide emissions of a country are closely related to the technological level, industrial structure, energy utilization structure, urbanization and economic development level, but the effects of these factors on carbon dioxide emissions are different. With the increase of human wealth, the growing energy consumption is the main factor of carbon dioxide emissions growth. Some researchers believe that the population, economy, technology and energy are the main factors to determine the carbon dioxide emissions. How does the population economic and technological level impact on carbon emissions for all the countries in the world? Are the decisive factors on carbon emissions contribution the same in the different countries?

In order to solve the above problems, Chinese and international scholars have launched a lot of research work. At present, some international scholars have studied the influence of population size on carbon emissions. Shi (2003) tests the relationship between population change and carbon emissions in 96 countries from 1975 to 1996 and finds that the impact on carbon emissions caused by the size of the population increasing is more serious in low income countries than in high low income countries. Hamilton and Turton (2002) find that the per capita income and population size are the main factors which increase carbon emissions in OECD. David (2009) Analyzes the relationship among carbon emissions, population growth and urbanization from1980 to 2005 in the world. The results show that the population urbanization has a very significant effect on carbon emissions. Thus we cannot achieve the goal of carbon emission reduction only by controlling population growth. York (2003) analyzes the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and population, and finds that the elastic coefficient of population on carbon dioxide emissions is near to 1, Shi (2003) finds that the elastic coefficient of population on carbon dioxide emissions is between 1.41 and 1.65.