Devil particles: Air pollution and safety liability accidents

IF 14.2 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Energy Economics Pub Date : 2025-09-10 DOI:10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108894

Zaikun Hou , Huan Chen , Ning Zhang

{"title":"Devil particles: Air pollution and safety liability accidents","authors":"Zaikun Hou , Huan Chen , Ning Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108894","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study empirically investigates the causal effect of air pollution on safety liability accidents. Based on the China Stock Market & Accounting Research (CSMAR) database, we compiled detailed information on 5873 safety liability accidents that occurred in China between 2000 and 2020. Using thermal inversions as an instrumental variable and applying a two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression model, our analysis reveals a significant positive impact of air pollution on safety liability accidents. Specifically, a doubling of PM<sub>2.5</sub> concentration is associated with approximately a 2.6-fold increase in the probability of safety liability accidents, a 37 % rise in fatalities, and a 51 % increase in total casualties. This effect is particularly pronounced in energy-intensive industries such as coal mining and construction. Further cost estimation suggests that safety liability accidents caused by a doubling of PM<sub>2.5</sub> concentration may result in social and economic losses ranging from approximately 4.92 billion to 10.1 billion USD. Mechanism analysis suggests that air pollution may significantly increase the risk of safety liability accidents through multiple pathways, including prolonged exposure duration, altered production behaviors, immediate environmental disruptions, and adverse effects on workers' physical and mental health.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":11665,"journal":{"name":"Energy Economics","volume":"151 ","pages":"Article 108894"},"PeriodicalIF":14.2000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Energy Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988325007212","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

This study empirically investigates the causal effect of air pollution on safety liability accidents. Based on the China Stock Market & Accounting Research (CSMAR) database, we compiled detailed information on 5873 safety liability accidents that occurred in China between 2000 and 2020. Using thermal inversions as an instrumental variable and applying a two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression model, our analysis reveals a significant positive impact of air pollution on safety liability accidents. Specifically, a doubling of PM_2.5 concentration is associated with approximately a 2.6-fold increase in the probability of safety liability accidents, a 37 % rise in fatalities, and a 51 % increase in total casualties. This effect is particularly pronounced in energy-intensive industries such as coal mining and construction. Further cost estimation suggests that safety liability accidents caused by a doubling of PM_2.5 concentration may result in social and economic losses ranging from approximately 4.92 billion to 10.1 billion USD. Mechanism analysis suggests that air pollution may significantly increase the risk of safety liability accidents through multiple pathways, including prolonged exposure duration, altered production behaviors, immediate environmental disruptions, and adverse effects on workers' physical and mental health.

查看原文本刊更多论文

魔鬼粒子：空气污染和安全责任事故

本研究对空气污染与安全责任事故的因果关系进行实证研究。基于中国证券市场与会计研究（CSMAR）数据库，我们收集了2000年至2020年间中国发生的5873起安全责任事故的详细信息。以气温逆温为工具变量，采用两阶段最小二乘（2SLS）回归模型进行分析，发现空气污染对安全责任事故有显著的正向影响。具体来说，PM2.5浓度增加一倍，安全责任事故的概率增加约2.6倍，死亡人数增加37%，总伤亡人数增加51%。这种影响在煤炭开采和建筑等能源密集型行业尤为明显。进一步的成本估算表明，PM2.5浓度增加一倍导致的安全责任事故可能造成约49.2亿至101亿美元的社会经济损失。机制分析表明，空气污染可通过延长暴露时间、改变生产行为、直接破坏环境以及对工人身心健康的不利影响等多种途径显著增加安全责任事故的风险。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Energy Economics ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

18.60

自引率

12.50%

发文量

524

期刊介绍： Energy Economics is a field journal that focuses on energy economics and energy finance. It covers various themes including the exploitation, conversion, and use of energy, markets for energy commodities and derivatives, regulation and taxation, forecasting, environment and climate, international trade, development, and monetary policy. The journal welcomes contributions that utilize diverse methods such as experiments, surveys, econometrics, decomposition, simulation models, equilibrium models, optimization models, and analytical models. It publishes a combination of papers employing different methods to explore a wide range of topics. The journal's replication policy encourages the submission of replication studies, wherein researchers reproduce and extend the key results of original studies while explaining any differences. Energy Economics is indexed and abstracted in several databases including Environmental Abstracts, Fuel and Energy Abstracts, Social Sciences Citation Index, GEOBASE, Social & Behavioral Sciences, Journal of Economic Literature, INSPEC, and more.