The Empirical Study of the Location Behaviors for Cement and Cement Product Manufacturing Industries

Cement and cement products are always the most important architecture and civil engineering materials and highly correlated with construction industry. However, these industries also emit much pollution, they may be environmental regulated by governments and public people, and they may be influenced by the social and economic conditions.
Many economists have introduced “Pollution Haven Hypothesis”, “Agglomeration Effects”, and so forth, for explaining location behaviors; and then empirical studied what kind of factors would influence the location behaviors (J. Vernon Henderson, 1994; Tim Jeppesen et. al., 2002; Smita B. Brunnermeier et. al., 2004).
Thus, this study used the new-registration factories for Industrial Development Bureau, Ministry of Economic Affairs to empirical study the location behaviors for cement and cement product manufacturing industries in Taiwan (excluded Penghu C., Kinmen C., and Lengchiang C.). The factors that influence the location behaviors include:

1. Industrial District Area: For measuring agglomeration effects and possible sites for industries.
2. Important Public Constructions: Including high-speed railway and mass rapid transits.
3. Environmental Regulation Stringency: Including formal regulations and informal regulations, for empirical studying the “Pollution Haven Hypothesis”.
4. Social and Economic Conditions: Including population density, per capita. income, and education degree.
5. Transportation Facilities: Including international commercial ports, and road density.

However, the number of new-registration factories is an integer, and large-count outcomes being rare events or zero. Thus, this study used the Econometrics methods- Poisson Regressions Analysis to analyze (Michael H. Kutner et. al., 2005).
Finally, this study found:

1. Industrial District Areas: They have positive effects on the location behaviors for agglomeration effect and possible sites for industries.
2. Important Public Constructions： They have positive effects on the location behaviors, especially the high-speed railway.
3. Environmental Regulations: Although the cement and cement product manufacturing industries are high pollution industries, the environmental regulations may have no negative effects on the location behaviors.
4. Social and Economic Conditions: Because the population density, per capita. income, and education degree are highly correlated, they can represent the “Urbanization Degree” and “Informal Regulation”. Thus, they have negative effects on the location behaviors, especially for the education degree.
5. Transportation Facilities: Because some materials are imported from foreign countries, the international commercial ports have significant positive effect on the location behaviors but only in Western Taiwan. Although the road density may represent the traffic conditions, the road density is also highly correlated with “Social and Economic Conditions”; its effect is similar to social and economic conditions.
Maybe there are many important public constructions in the urbanization cities and then accelerate the developments for industries and urbanization cities; however, in the urbanization cities, the people may also more regard for the environmental quality, the land price is more expensive, and the possible sites for industries are less, and so forth. These conditions would have negative effects on the location behaviors for industries. However, if the important public constructions and industries are located in the rural regions, maybe there will be many possible sites to be located, the land price is cheap, these constructions, and industries may accelerate the economic developments; however, these constructions and industries may also destroy the environmental quality.
Thus, it is an important issue that how to balance the economic developments and environmental qualities in order to “Sustainable Develop”.