The Center for Modern Chinese City Studies, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China; School of Geography, University of Melbourne, 221 Bouverie Street, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia.
School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, 200433, China.
J Environ Manage. 2019 Dec 1;251:109600. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.109600. Epub 2019 Sep 30.
Information disclosure in environmental governance, or informational governance conceptualized by Arthur Mol, has been increasingly utilized as a policy instrument to incentivize environmental policy enforcement in not only democratic societies but also authoritarian regimes like China. This study uses an explicit regulation, the air pollution ranking in Chinese cities as an example to illustrate how such informational governance policy instrument has an impact on local air pollution governance. Empirical evidence is based on monthly comprehensive air quality index ranking data of 74 key monitoring cities in China from 2013 to 2018. And a regression discontinuity design is applied to explore the relationship between air pollution ranking and air quality improvement in localities. The results show that (1) air quality of the bottom ten cities in the ranking will improve in the coming month compared with their counterparts; (2) such improvement happens upon the releasing of the ranking, but would not last for more than a month; (3) while top ten cities in the ranking do not experience such change in air quality. Therefore, we argue that the air pollution ranking system in China can be a useful informational governance instrument in providing negative incentives for environmental administrations in bottom cities to strengthen air pollution control. However, as a top-down environmental information disclosure program, such ranking institution could only mobilize local air quality governance temporarily. And new institutions ought to be established to further internalized local governments' environmental externalities.
环境治理中的信息披露，或者由 Arthur Mol 概念化的信息治理，已经越来越多地被用作激励环境政策执行的政策工具，不仅在民主社会，而且在像中国这样的威权政权中也是如此。本研究以一项明确的规定，即中国城市的空气污染排名为例，来说明这种信息治理政策工具如何影响地方空气污染治理。实证证据基于 2013 年至 2018 年中国 74 个重点监测城市的每月综合空气质量指数排名数据。并应用回归不连续设计来探索排名与地方空气质量改善之间的关系。结果表明：（1）排名中最后十名城市的空气质量将在未来一个月内得到改善，与它们的对应城市相比；（2）这种改善是在排名发布时发生的，但不会持续一个月以上；（3）而排名前十的城市的空气质量则不会发生这种变化。因此，我们认为中国的空气污染排名系统可以作为一种有用的信息治理工具，为底部城市的环境管理部门提供加强空气污染控制的负面激励。然而，作为一种自上而下的环境信息披露计划，这种排名制度只能暂时调动地方的空气质量治理。应该建立新的制度，以进一步将地方政府的环境外部性内在化。
