With the rapid development of industrialization, the global ambient air pollution problem is becoming the increasingly severe environmental issues (Morgan, 2016). Since the launch of the Reform and Opening-up policy in 1978, China has experienced rapid industrialization and urbanization. Paralleling the experiences of most developed countries, China's rapid economic growth has also produced significant volumes of pollution emissions, especially air pollutants (Lin et al., 2010; Shaobin Wang, Ren, Liu, & Yin, 2022). The ambient air pollution caused by suspended particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, ozone and other atmospheric pollutants in urban areas seriously affects human health (Akhbarizadeh et al., 2021; Pang et al., 2019). So considerable attention has been given to urban ambient air quality. In response to the risks posed by air pollution, the Chinese government has implemented a series of policies, measures and regulations which have achieved certain results. However, most of the studies on ambient air quality trend conducted in China mainly focused on metropolitan cities (K. L. Chan et al., 2017) such as Beijing and Shanghai or coastal cities (Y. Zhang, Zhou, Chen, & Rangel-Buitrago, 2022; Zhu, Sun, Liu, Lu, & Liu, 2020) such as Tianjin and Xiamen. The ambient air quality data in the central economic zone of inland provinces in the Northeast China is lacking. The influencing factors of regional ambient air quality change are another concern (Zhao, Niu, & Feng, 2021). The factors affecting ambient air quality include internal factors and external factors. Generally speaking, the meteorological condition (Bo et al., 2020) is one of the most important external factors. Energy structures, industrial air pollutant emissions and waste gas treatment methods (Qiu et al., 2017; Wu, Deng, Li, & Guo, 2021) are the main internal factors. Although there has been a lot of relevant reports, studies on the influencing factors of ambient air quality in specific areas are rare.
The period from 2016 to 2020 marks the 13th Five-Year Plan period for China's economic and social development. Monitoring regional ambient air quality, timely analyzing the change trends and influencing factors and forming targeted management strategies are necessary with the rapid development of economy and society. In this study, ambient air quality in Heping District of Shenyang city during the 13th Five-Year Plan period has been monitored. The concentration change trends of seven main air pollutants (PM10, PM2.5, SO2, NO2, CO, O3 and dust fall) are analyzed. The effects between 17 influencing factors and ambient air quality are obtained by the grey relational model. The findings would supply valuable experiences and ideas for other developing countries and ongoing scientific researches in the future.