School of economics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China.
School of economics, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China.
J Environ Manage. 2021 Sep 15;294:112922. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112922. Epub 2021 Jun 5.
As one of the "four sharp teeth" of China's new environmental protection law, the daily penalty policy which is characterized by high deterrent effect and high violation cost plays an important role in restraining repeated violations of polluting firms. In order to further test the effectiveness of the daily penalty policy in pollution control and emission reduction, this study evaluates the policy through the time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) method using data from Chinese industrial firms from 2003 to 2012. The results show that the daily penalty policy significantly reduced industrial SO emissions, which is supported by a series of robustness tests. Further mechanistic tests found that the daily penalty policy can reduce emissions by promoting the use of clean energy at the front-end prevention and increasing pollution control equipment and product innovation at end-governance. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the daily penalty policy has a significant emission reduction effect on low energy consumption firms, large-scale firms and firms in clean industry. The SO emission of foreign-funded firms is more reduced than that of state-owned and private firms. In addition, the level of emission reduction by exporting firms and firms in a mature recession are more affected by this policy. This study validates the effect of the daily penalty policy on emission reduction of firms. We found that the stringent command-and-control environmental regulations can also effectively encourage firms to control pollution and promote the transformation of firms toward long-term green development strategies and energy-saving and emission-reducing production patterns, and achieve a reasonable combination with market-based incentive environmental regulations. It provides new ideas and inspiration for implementation and improvement of the daily penalty policy and the strategic deployment of environmental governance in China.
作为中国新环保法的“四大杀手锏”之一，以高威慑效应和高违法成本为特点的按日连续处罚制度在遏制污染企业的重复违法行为方面发挥了重要作用。为了进一步检验按日连续处罚制度在污染减排方面的有效性，本研究利用 2003 年至 2012 年中国工业企业的数据，采用时变倍差法（DID）对该政策进行了评估。结果表明，按日连续处罚政策显著降低了工业 SO 排放，这一系列稳健性检验也支持了这一结果。进一步的机制检验发现，按日连续处罚政策可以通过促进前端预防使用清洁能源和增加污染控制设备和产品创新来实现末端治理减排。异质性分析表明，按日连续处罚政策对低能耗企业、大规模企业和清洁产业企业具有显著的减排效果。外资企业的 SO 排放减少幅度大于国有企业和私营企业。此外，出口企业和处于成熟衰退期的企业的减排水平受该政策的影响更大。本研究验证了按日连续处罚政策对企业减排的效果。我们发现，严格的命令-控制型环境法规也可以有效地鼓励企业控制污染，促进企业向长期绿色发展战略和节能减排生产模式转变，并实现与市场激励型环境法规的合理结合。这为中国按日连续处罚政策的实施和完善以及环境治理的战略部署提供了新的思路和启示。
