School of Economics, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230601, China.
School of Mathematics, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230601, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Dec 17;17(24):9459. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17249459.
The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly regards the prevention and control of environmental pollution as one of the "three key battles" to build a well-off society. This paper analyzes the relationship between social capital and environmental pollution from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. From the theoretical perspective, social capital has two opposite effects on environmental pollution: the suppression and the promotion. The former indicates that the improvement of social capital level reduces the cost of residents' boycott to pollution and reduces pollution emissions, while the latter manifests that the improvement of social capital worsens environmental pollution due to the ability of polluting enterprises to withstand residents' boycott. Based on the panel data of China from 2008 to 2016, the empirical results show that social capital has inverted U-shaped characteristics on environmental pollution. Low level of social capital will increase pollution emissions and only when social capital reaches a certain level can it be beneficial to environmental protection. This paper attempts to better understand the functions of social capital in environmental governance and provides constructive proposals on how to exert the governance role of social capital on environmental protection for policy makers. Regions with higher levels of social capital should exert the suppression effect of social capital and regions with low levels should focus on improving the level of social capital, while formal regulation means shall be adopted to control pollution.
中国共产党第十九次全国代表大会明确将环境污染防治作为全面建成小康社会的“三大攻坚战”之一。本文从理论和实证两个角度分析了社会资本与环境污染之间的关系。从理论角度看，社会资本对环境污染有两种相反的影响：抑制和促进。前者表明，社会资本水平的提高降低了居民抵制污染的成本，减少了污染排放，而后者则表明，由于污染企业承受居民抵制的能力提高，社会资本的提高会加剧环境污染。基于 2008 年至 2016 年中国的面板数据，实证结果表明，社会资本对环境污染具有倒 U 型特征。低水平的社会资本会增加污染排放，只有当社会资本达到一定水平时，才有利于环境保护。本文试图更好地理解社会资本在环境治理中的作用，并为政策制定者提供如何发挥社会资本在环境保护方面的治理作用的建设性建议。社会资本水平较高的地区应发挥社会资本的抑制作用，社会资本水平较低的地区应注重提高社会资本水平，同时应采取正式的监管手段控制污染。
