Regional Environment Risk Assessment Over Space and Time: A Case of China

Faced with increasingly serious environmental risks, it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the regional environment to provide a solid foundation for environmental policies and actions in the future. This article builds a composite environment risk index that considers spatiotemporal factors and uses annual socio-economic and environmental data of China's 31 provincial administrative regions from 2004 to 2019 to quantitatively analyze environmental risks. Furthermore, the article employs a panel data model to empirically test the key factors that lead to environmental risks. Moreover, this article employs SVAR models to analyze the dynamics of regional environmental systems in China. The study finds that, at least at this stage, the environmental risks in provincial regions in China are still relatively high, and the key factors of the risks are economic growth, urbanization development, secondary industry growth, and green policy. Therefore, China must adopt more stringent environmental protection policies and actions in the future.