Study on the interaction and relation of society, economy and environment based on PCA–VAR model: As a case study of the Bohai Rim region, China

Ongoing success throughout regional development is contingent on maintaining the function, quality and harmony progress in society, economy and environment domains, so exploring the interaction and relation among them should be considerable significant. The model by coupling principal component analysis and vector autoregressive, which relate the aggregated values and dynamic analysis among factors, is proposed to achieve the qualitative and quantitative analysis of interaction and relation among society, economy and environment subsystem, providing a framework to conceptualize the influences among their changes and simulate the future scenarios in the Bohai Rim region. The impulse response analysis and variance decomposition of vector autoregressive method, in particular, permit dynamic interaction between every two systems and display clear decomposition of contribution for each change, respectively. This study results show that: there is a virtuous circle of promotion between economic growth and social progress no matter which is regarded as the endogenous variable during the study period, and yet the negative effect to environmental changes had been produced; what the improvement of social and environmental situation need most might be advancing its own progress; it is also reflected that the entire complicated system walk on the path of unsustainable development due to the evident disequilibrium of three subsystems; and the scenario analysis results obviously tell that in order to attain coordinated development, the annual growth rate of 12% to 16% of overall environmental level should be anticipated along with 8% of social and economic level improve. The study guide future possibilities for relatively more harmonious interconnections among social, economic and the environmental development.