Decomposition analysis of decoupling freight transport from economic growth in China

Freight transport industry plays a significant role in boosting economic growth, while also creating many negative externalities for social welfare and the environment. Using data from 1997 to 2017, this study employs the complete decomposition technique to identify the driving forces of freight transport and explores its internal relations with economic growth in China. The decomposition analysis focuses on four factors that are responsible for freight transport: economic activity, industrial structure, transport intensity, and haulage distance. Then, the decoupling index is adopted to examine the decoupling relationship between freight transport and economic growth in China. The results showed that weak decoupling between freight transport and economic growth was the main state during the study period. A strong decoupling effect was identified in 1997–1998, 2012–2013, and 2014–2015, whereas no decoupling effect was observed in 1998–1999, 2008–2009, and 2011–2012. The transport intensity was the most important contributor to the decoupling progress, the industrial structure effect played a role in promoting the decoupling progress over half of the years during the research period, and the haulage distance effect facilitated the decoupling progress in more than one-third of the years examined.