College of Economics, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China.
School of Business, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Jan 4;20(2):923. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20020923.
This paper investigates how local governments coordinate the relationship between economic growth targets (EGT) and environmental protection targets (EPT) and the impact of such coordination on firm's environmental performance. Using the pollution emission data of China's industrial firms covering 2003 to 2013, we show that firms in the cities where officials are setting overweighted economic growth targets have more sulfur dioxide intensity, while the central government's hard constraints on EPT included in the official performance evaluation system could partially mitigate the environmental externality of the economic growth target. Further, we find that overweighted EGT significantly decreases firms' desulfurization facilities, capacity, and ratio, while the hard constraint of EPT helps mitigate this negative relationship. We also find that the positive relationship between overweight EGT and firm emissions is more pronounced in the dirty industry, while the hard constraint of EPT helps to mitigate this relationship. The above results help to identify an underlying mechanism of environmental regulation. Finally, we show that converting the hard constraints of environmental protection targets to self-constraint by local government officials could reverse the environmental externality of the economic growth target.
本文研究了地方政府如何协调经济增长目标（EGT）和环境保护目标（EPT）之间的关系，以及这种协调对企业环境绩效的影响。利用中国工业企业的污染排放数据，覆盖 2003 年至 2013 年，我们发现官员设定经济增长目标过高的城市中的企业二氧化硫排放强度更高，而中央政府在官员绩效评估体系中对 EPT 的硬性约束可以部分减轻经济增长目标的环境外部性。此外，我们发现，过重的 EGT 显著降低了企业的脱硫设施、容量和比例，而 EPT 的硬性约束有助于减轻这种负面影响。我们还发现，过重的 EGT 与企业排放之间的正相关关系在污染行业更为明显，而 EPT 的硬性约束有助于减轻这种关系。上述结果有助于确定环境监管的潜在机制。最后，我们表明，将环境保护目标的硬性约束转化为地方政府官员的自我约束，可能会扭转经济增长目标的环境外部性。
