Crackdowns in Hierarchies: Evidence from China's Environmental Inspections

Karplus, Valerie J.; Wu, Mengying

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3449177

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…In practice, firms can also bypass pollution-control measures by manipulating the operating frequency of the SO 2 scrubber. For instance, firms can operate the SO 2 scrubber only upon the imminence of inspection to reduce costs and still pass the inspection without any problems [21,22]. Together, all these delineations lead to hypothesis H1.…”

Section: Research Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Multi-Tasking Policy Coordination and Corporate Environmental Performance: Evidence from China

Xie

Tian

Pang

2023

IJERPH

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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.

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Section: Research Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Multi-Tasking Policy Coordination and Corporate Environmental Performance: Evidence from China

Xie

Tian

Pang

2023

IJERPH

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“…The central government sends CEPI teams, led by ad hoc high-ranking cadres, into different provinces to check whether the local governments implement environmental protection policies and some prominent environmental issues (Xiang and van Gevelt, 2020). As a response, local governments are inclined to comply with environmental regulations by closing down polluting industries, stopping production, demolishing outdated factory equipment, and levying high fines to polluting enterprises, and thus to achieve the environmental target within a short time (Karplus and Wu, 2019). CEPI consisted of five successive batches, starting in January 2016 and ending in September 2017, and covered all 31 provinces in China.…”

Section: Cepi In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The "Regulations on the Work of CEPI" issued in 2019 has clearly stated that CEPI will be carried out every five years, indicating a tendency of normalization and institutionalization. This particular tendency of CEPI may change local governments' behavior, public opinion, and enterprises' responses (Karplus and Wu, 2019). For instance, enterprises are more likely to take powerful measures to reduce pollution due to the threat of long-term sanctions, and local governments may focus more on pollution reduction.…”

Section: Cepi and Pollution Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Benefits and costs of campaign-style environmental implementation: evidence from China’s central environmental protection inspection system

Pan

Hong

2022

Environ Sci Pollut Res

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Campaign-style environmental implementation (CEI) is widely exerted in environmental protection, while its benefits and costs are controversial. We take advantage of the Central Environmental Protection Inspection (CEPI) System-a latest and distinguished form of CEI launched by China in 2016, as a quasi-natural experiment to compare the benefits and costs of CEI based on water pollution effects estimates. Our results based on the annual panel data from 500 cities during 2009-2018 show that CEPI significantly reduced water pollution by an average of 11.2%. Further cost-benefit analysis based on the estimates of water pollution reduction shows that the potential health benefits of mortality and morbidity reduction resulting from CEPI are at least $279.5 billion, which is greater than the $192.2 billion economic losses it causes. The gap is further magnified after considering the potential biases. We also explore why CEPI is cost-effective and find that CEPI reduces water pollution and becomes cost-effective mainly through deterring local officials, punishing polluting enterprises, and increasing public participation in environmental governance.

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“…More than 29,000 companies have been fined a total of 220 million USD. Empirical studies have demonstrated that these inspections reduced environmental pollution and improved governments' environmental performance, at least in the short run (Jia & Chen, 2019; Karplus & Wu, 2019; Li et al., 2020; Xiang & Gevelt, 2020).…”

Section: Government Responsiveness: Related Literature and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, environmental protection and pollution control have been major concerns of the Chinese central government over the past 2 decades (Ahlers & Shen, 2018; Wang et al., 2021). The country's centralized enforcement campaign and informal institutions, such as crackdowns, have recently resulted in environmental governance progress, including reduced pollution and emission levels (Karplus & Wu, 2019; Li et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2021). However, it has not yet been investigated whether the regime's environmental governance efforts affect citizens' environmental evaluation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Government responsiveness and citizen satisfaction: Evidence from environmental governance

Nie

Wang

2022

Governance

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Prior research has overlooked the dynamics between government responsiveness and citizen satisfaction. This article addresses this gap by examining (1) how styles of government responses affect citizen satisfaction differently and (2) how external events moderate the effects of government responsiveness on citizens. Drawing upon 79,360 environmental demands sent to local leaders in China and 100,905 Chinese citizens' environmental assessments collected from 2013 to 18, this study finds that actional and explanatory responses positively influence citizen satisfaction, while referral responses negatively affect citizen satisfaction. Moreover, these relationships are subject to the moderating effects of exogenous pressures. Top‐down pressure from the central government's environmental inspections and bottom‐up pressure from the environmental documentary Under the Dome represent two types of exogeneities during the study period. The findings corroborate a dynamic government‐citizen relationship that is shaped by government responding actions and sociopolitical changes.

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Crackdowns in Hierarchies: Evidence from China's Environmental Inspections

Cited by 12 publications

References 26 publications

Multi-Tasking Policy Coordination and Corporate Environmental Performance: Evidence from China

Multi-Tasking Policy Coordination and Corporate Environmental Performance: Evidence from China

Benefits and costs of campaign-style environmental implementation: evidence from China’s central environmental protection inspection system

Government responsiveness and citizen satisfaction: Evidence from environmental governance

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