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; Beijing Key Lab of Energy Economics and Environmental Management, 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.
School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
Sci Total Environ. 2021 Apr 1;763:144183. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144183. Epub 2020 Dec 17.
The massive development of the Chinese economy is being hindered by the deteriorating air pollution problem. Many methods have been used by the Chinese government to solve this environmental dilemma, out of which environmental decentralization is one of the important measures. The transparency of environmental decentralization may be weakened by the existence of the corruption problem, resulting in further deterioration of the air pollution problem. To examine this problem, the provincial panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2016 is selected and the spatial measurement method is used to study the relationship between environmental decentralization, government corruption, and air pollution. The results indicate that air pollution in different provinces of China is spatially dependent. Local environmental decentralization has a significant inhibitory effect on air pollution, while local air pollution is not inhibited by neighbor's environmental decentralization. However, air quality is significantly deteriorated by local or neighbor's corruption problem. After adding the interaction item of environmental decentralization and government corruption as the adjusting variable, it is found that the inhibitory effect of local environmental decentralization on air pollution is weakened by the problem of local government corruption, while the government corruption of neighbor does not have this effect. In addition, both local and neighbor's environmental decentralization have heterogeneous effects on air pollution from the spatial dynamic threshold regression results with regional corruption as the threshold variable.
中国经济的快速发展受到了日益恶化的空气污染问题的阻碍。为了解决这一环境困境,中国政府采取了多种方法,其中环境分权是重要措施之一。腐败问题的存在可能会削弱环境分权的透明度,从而导致空气污染问题进一步恶化。为了研究这一问题,本文选取了中国 2005-2016 年 30 个省份的省级面板数据,采用空间计量方法研究了环境分权、政府腐败与空气污染之间的关系。结果表明,中国不同省份的空气污染具有空间依赖性。地方环境分权对空气污染有显著的抑制作用,而地方空气污染不会受到邻居环境分权的抑制。然而,本地或邻居的腐败问题会显著恶化空气质量。在加入环境分权和政府腐败的交互项作为调节变量后,发现地方政府腐败问题削弱了地方环境分权对空气污染的抑制作用,而邻居的政府腐败则没有这种作用。此外,从以区域腐败为门槛变量的空间动态门槛回归结果来看,地方和邻居的环境分权对空气污染的影响存在异质性。