Explaining The Level of Air Pollution in Turkey at The County Level Using Employment Distribution

Abstract

Indisputably, air pollution is a very important environmental issue. It has been perhaps the most important environmental pollution type, as it urges the countries and regions to act responsibly not only for themselves, but also for each other. Air pollution has first started with industrialization and has incremented ever since with the increasing usage of fossil fuels. Air pollution has now become a global environmental problem at most sites of the world. The seriousness of this problem varies geographically. Urban air pollution can be explained with population density, population increase, urbanization, industrialization, traffic density, topography and meteorological factors.

The increasing usage of fossil fuels is alone another crucial urban air polluter. Parallel to the increasing urban population, population density, industrialization and the usage of fossil fuels, air pollution has become a serious environmental problem in urban areas in Turkey, since the second half of the 20th century.

This study aims to explain the level of urban air pollution by urban explanatory variables including the economic structure of the city (the distribution of employment among economic sectors) using regression analysis. Urban air pollution is measured through the level of atmospheric particulate matter. The results show that, the level of urban air pollution in the city, or the level of atmospheric particulate matter at the county (district) level increases by an increase in the employment shares of (1) mining and quarrying sector, (2) construction sector, (3) wholesale / retail trade sectors. Whereas, the level of atmospheric particulate matter decreases by an increase in (1) real estate activities sector, (2) wholesale and retail trade sector and (3) other services sector. The selected model has explains about 78% of the proportion of the variability in the dependent variable (R2=.777).