The Impact of Heterogeneous Environmental Regulations on Location Choices of Pollution-Intensive Firms in China

The spatial transfer pattern and dynamic mechanisms of pollution-intensive industries are key issues for national and regional sustainable development. Although previous studies have emphasized the impact of environmental regulations on the transfer of pollution industries, there is a lack of firm-level analysis of the combined effects of different types of environmental regulations and other factors on them, which has led to the pollution haven hypothesis remaining contested. In order to provide micro evidence to test the pollution haven hypothesis, this paper reveals the temporal and spatial evolution of pollution-intensive foreign firms’ distribution in China, and explores the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulations on the location choices by using spatial analysis and zero-inflated negative binomial regression. The empirical results were as follows: Firstly, pollution-intensive foreign firms were highly concentrated in the eastern developed region and have a strong path dependency in China. Secondly, environmental regulations, especially the market-based environmental regulation, had a significant negative impact on the location choices of pollution-intensive foreign firms. Thirdly, the spatial distribution of pollution-intensive foreign firms was strongly influenced by new economic and geographic factors. Fourthly, pollution-intensive foreign firms have a significant pollution border effects in developed regions but not in economically less-developed regions due to transportation costs. The governments are expected to adopt heterogeneous environmental regulations based on the level of regional economic development to avoid the pollution haven phenomenon, thus achieving a sustainable development.

Rental Location Choice Characteristics and Tendencies of Migrants in Guangzhou, China

The inner-urban residential location choice is a topic of continuing interest in urban geography. However, not much research has been done on migrants’ rental location choices. Based on data from a questionnaire completed by 276 migrant renters in Guangzhou, this paper analyzes the demographics and social class characteristics of migrants, and the condition and location of housing preferred by this population. The results show that the migrants in Guangzhou mainly rent in the Center Business District (CBD) area (Tianhe District) and Huangpu, Panyu and Haizhu districts. The main reason for this choice of location choices is the houses’ convenience to their workplaces. A second reason is that nearby subways make travel convenient, for consumption and daily life, for children to go to school, and for access to large shopping centers/malls.

Do Migrant and Native Robbers Target Different Places?

The spatial pattern of crime has been a central theme of criminological research. Recently, the spatial variation in the crime location choice of offenders by different population groups has been gaining more attention. This study addresses the issue of whether the spatial distribution of migrant robbers’ crime location choices is different from those of native robbers. Further, what factors contribute to such differences? Using a kernel density estimation and the discrete spatial choice modeling, we combine the offender data, POI data, and mobile phone data to explain the crime location choice of the street robbers who committed offenses and were arrested from 2012 to 2016 in ZG City, China. The results demonstrate that the crime location choices between migrant robbers and native robbers have obvious spatial differences. Migrant robbers tend to choose the labor-intensive industrial cluster, while native robbers prefer the old urban areas and urban villages. Wholesale markets, sports stadiums, transportation hubs, and subway stations only affect migrant robbers’ crime location choices, but not native robbers’. These results may be attributable to the different spatial awareness between migrant robbers and native robbers. The implications of the findings for criminological theory and crime prevention are discussed.

Embedded Entrepreneurship

This chapter reviews and reflects on Olav Sorenson’s most influential stream of research. He has examined how and why social relationships influence where entrepreneurs locate their startups. He has studied how those location choices, in turn, contribute to the success of those startups. And, he has examined how these constraints help to determine the economic geography of entire industries. The chapter both reflects on the lessons learned from the individual studies and speculates as to why some scholars end up being more influential than others.

The Location Choice of Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Development in Africa

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflow to Africa has unevenly distributed investment location choices of multinational enterprises because of some exogenous economic factors associated with the locations, which vary across countries in Africa. The data used in the paper comes from Financial Times, World Bank, African Development Bank. This paper investigated what determines the location choice of FDI inflow to Africa using data on 3,768 firms from 88 countries making location choices in 54 African countries using a multicategory logistic regression. The findings show that: (1) the natural resource seeking enterprises invest more in landlocked countries relative to manufacturing and tertiary sector; (2) the natural resource seeking firms are less concerned about local market size and location’s economic condition comparing to manufacturing and service industries; (3) despite the accusation against the multinational enterprises (MNEs) for exploiting Africa’s natural resources, most of the MNEs choose locations with a large market size and better economic development; (4) the MNEs from developed economies prefer the location with a large market size and a better-developed economy comparing to those from the developing economies.

Investigating Syrian Refugees’ Choice of Location in Urban Areas as a Subjective Process: A Cross-case Comparison in the Neighbourhoods of Önder (Ankara) and Yunusemre (İzmir)

In migration literature, the growing interest in the localized and subjective forms of refugee emplacement in urban areas following the influx of Syrian refugees has brought along new debates on how to approach the location choices (LC) of refugees. Accordingly, in this study, we investigated the different dimensions of Syrian refugees’ location choices at the urban/neighbourhood level. Specifically, we aimed to understand the dynamics behind the growing tendency among Syrian refugees in Turkey to settle in neighbourhoods that are close to inner-city industrial sites by conducting two case studies in the Önder neighbourhood of Ankara and the Yunusemre neighbourhood of İzmir in a comparative manner. From the twenty-three interviews conducted with Syrians, we uncovered the themes of LC and categorized them in accordance with the dimensions of LC addressed in the literature. We identified three main dimensions that affected Syrians’ location choices at the neighbourhood level as: economic (the availability of job opportunities, public and commercial services, the affordability of accommodation), socio-cultural (the existence of co-ethnics, kinship/ethnic relations) and socio-spatial (proximity to the city centre, transportation, public and commercial services, workplaces). Here, we acknowledged the intertwined relation between these dimensions and refugee subjectivity in LC.