School of Mathematics and Statistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China.
School of Applied Economics, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China.
J Environ Manage. 2023 Jan 1;325(Pt A):116518. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.116518. Epub 2022 Oct 20.
Many countries have formulated strict environmental regulation policies, but unfortunately, environmental pollution is still severe. We believe that this phenomenon may result from institutional factors. We study whether local government competition affects the dependence on polluting industries and test it with the transaction data of China's land market. We find that the decline in the economic ranking of cities increases the scale of land transferred to polluting industries, and the more the ranking decline, the larger the scale of land in polluting industries. Besides, we analyze the impact of the first decline in the urban economic ranking, finding that the land transfer scale of polluting industries exhibits a trend of slowing down after a rapid rise in the short term. Heterogeneity analysis shows that officials with lower education levels and before-retirement age will dependent more on polluting industries to a greater extent when they face local government competition, and cities with economic growth lower than the national average will increase their dependence on polluting industries to a greater extent. This paper provides new insights into the causes of the environmental governance dilemma, which also highlights the need to weaken economic indicators and strengthen environmental indicators in government performance assessment.
许多国家都制定了严格的环境法规政策，但不幸的是，环境污染仍然严重。我们认为这种现象可能是制度因素造成的。我们研究了地方政府竞争是否会影响对污染产业的依赖，并利用中国土地市场的交易数据进行了检验。我们发现，城市经济排名的下降会增加污染产业的土地转让规模，排名下降幅度越大，污染产业的土地规模越大。此外，我们还分析了城市经济排名首次下降的影响，发现污染产业的土地转让规模在短期内快速上升后呈现出放缓的趋势。异质性分析表明，在面临地方政府竞争时，教育水平较低和即将退休的官员在更大程度上依赖污染产业，经济增长低于全国平均水平的城市在更大程度上增加了对污染产业的依赖。本文为环境治理困境的原因提供了新的视角，也凸显了在政府绩效评估中弱化经济指标和强化环境指标的必要性。
