Does the Raise of Local Government's Environmental Attention Have Positive Impacts on Emission Reduction? ‐‐ A Research on the Regulatory Role of Environmental Decentralization

Qiang Li ； Yiman Yang ； Wei Wei

《Frontiers in Economics and Management》 4卷1期 (2023/01) Pp. 95-107

https://doi.org/10.6981/FEM.202301_4(1).0010

摘要

How to fight the battle against pollution has become the focus of attention of the central and local governments. This paper introduces the attention theory in psychology, explains the internal mechanism of environmental attention (EA) of local government affecting environmental pollution (EP) from the two dimensions of environmental regulation (ER) intensity and environmental governance (EG) investment, and discusses the regulatory effect of environmental decentralization (ED). Based on the provincial panel data of 30 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) in China from 2000 to 2015, this paper empirically studies the impact of local government's EA on EP. The main research conclusions are as follows: (1) The improvement of local government's EA is conducive to reducing the level of EP. This marked the implementation of the "river length system" and decentralized environmental governance are important ways to achieve green development. (2) After introducing the regulatory role of ED, the impacts of local government's EA on EP was enhanced, which means that ED has a positive regulation effect on the emission reduction effect of local government's environmental attention. (3)The regression results of the spatial Dubin model considering spatial spillover effect show that the increased EA of local governments will significantly reduce the level of environmental pollution, but this effect is mainly from the direct effect, and the spatial spillover effect is not obvious. Finally, the policy suggestions are proposed to strengthen EG through reforming the ED system, raising the EA of local governments, and adjusting the assessment criteria for the performance of local government.

關鍵字

Environmental Attention ； Emission Reduction ； Regulatory Role of Environmental Decentralization

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