School of Public Administration, Beihang University, Beijing, China.
School of Business, Hebei Normal University for Nationalities, Chengde, Hebei, China.
PLoS One. 2024 Mar 28;19(3):e0301031. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0301031. eCollection 2024.
The water resource tax reform played an important role in promoting sustainable development in China. Subsequent to the seven-year reform, the effectiveness evaluation of the policy in each pilot area and the exploration of the optimization path directly affected the promotion of water resource tax policy and the improvement of water use efficiency. Therefore, the theoretical framework of the water resource tax policy field was constructed to examine the mechanism of the three subsystems of policy scenario, policy orientation, and policy effect; fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was then used to evaluate and quantitatively compare the policy implementation effect and policy path in each pilot area, with emphasis put on three policy orientations, i.e., the decision and decomposition effect of policy goals, the selection and im plementation effect of policy tools, and the policy supervision and security effect. As shown by the research results: ① the water resource tax reform had effectively improved the efficiency of water resource utilization in the pilot areas; ② three pilot models of water resource tax policy had been extracted, namely the policy goal and tool-driven model centering on a single dimension of the policy field, the implementation-supervision dual drive model emphasizing the supervision and security effect of the policy, and the three-dimensional policy orientation linkage model that focused on the synergistic effect of the policy field; ③ strong heterogeneity existed in water resource tax policy implementation paths and effects in each pilot area. Accordingly, regional heterogeneity could be considered in the process of reform to construct institutionalized, precise, and differentiated reform implementation methods from the perspective of the policy field.
水资源税改革在中国推动可持续发展方面发挥了重要作用。在七年的改革之后，政策在每个试点地区的效果评估和优化路径的探索直接影响了水资源税政策的推广和用水效率的提高。因此，构建了水资源税政策领域的理论框架，以检验政策情景、政策导向和政策效果三个子系统的机制；然后采用模糊集定性比较分析（fsQCA）对每个试点地区的政策实施效果和政策路径进行评估和定量比较，重点关注三个政策导向，即政策目标的决策和分解效果、政策工具的选择和实施效果以及政策监督和安全效果。研究结果表明：①水资源税改革有效提高了试点地区水资源利用效率；②提取了三种水资源税政策试点模式，即政策领域单一维度为中心的政策目标和工具驱动模式、强调政策监督和安全效果的实施-监督双驱动模式以及关注政策领域协同效应的三维政策导向联动模式；③各试点地区水资源税政策实施路径和效果存在较强的异质性。因此，在改革过程中可以考虑区域异质性，从政策领域的角度构建制度化、精准化和差异化的改革实施方法。
