Center for Innovation Management, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830047, China; College of Economics and Management, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830047, China.
School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China; Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China; Sustainable Development Research Institute for Economy and Society of Beijing, Beijing 100081, China; Collaborative Innovation Center of Electric Vehicles in Beijing, Beijing 100081, China; Beijing Key Lab of Energy Economics and Environmental Management, Beijing 100081, China.
Sci Total Environ. 2020 Jun 15;721:137656. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137656. Epub 2020 Mar 3.
As an institutional influential factor of environmental quality, environmental decentralization may play an important role in carbon emission control. Given China's rapid economic development and increasing environmental pollution, this study aims to investigate how environmental decentralization affects China's carbon emissions. Environmental decentralization indicators are reconstructed from the perspective of dynamic changes in the number of staff in environmental protection agencies on the basis of China's 30 provinces from 2005 to 2016. Spatial panel and dynamic threshold models are employed to investigate the impacts of environmental decentralization on carbon emissions. Results indicate that a remarkably positive spatial correlation is found in regional carbon emissions in China, and environmental decentralization has a positive impact on carbon emissions, suggesting that China's current environmental decentralization system may be unconducive to carbon emission control. Taking different environmental decentralization types as threshold variables, results from the dynamic threshold panel model show that environmental administrative decentralization and environmental monitoring decentralization have a positive threshold promoting effect on carbon emissions, whereas environmental supervision decentralization has a negative threshold inhibiting effect on carbon emissions. Therefore, the environmental administrative and monitoring power of local governments must be appropriately reduced and an environmental management mechanism must be developed for joint prevention and control to reduce carbon emissions.
作为环境质量的制度性影响因素，环境分权在控制碳排放方面可能发挥着重要作用。鉴于中国经济的快速发展和环境污染的日益加剧，本研究旨在探讨环境分权如何影响中国的碳排放。在基于中国 2005-2016 年 30 个省份的环境保护机构工作人员数量动态变化的基础上，从动态变化的角度重新构建了环境分权指标。采用空间面板和动态门槛模型，考察了环境分权对碳排放的影响。结果表明，中国区域碳排放存在显著的正空间相关性，环境分权对碳排放有正向影响，表明中国现行的环境分权制度可能不利于碳排放控制。以不同的环境分权类型为门槛变量，动态门槛面板模型的结果表明，环境行政分权和环境监测分权对碳排放有正向的门槛促进作用，而环境监管分权对碳排放有负向的门槛抑制作用。因此，必须适当减少地方政府的环境行政和监测权力，建立环境管理机制，进行联合防控，以减少碳排放。
