Does central supervision enhance local environmental enforcement? Quasi-experimental evidence from China

The economic consequences of environmental regulation in China: From a perspective of the environmental protection admonishing talk policy

“…The EPAT policy has formed a strong and effective deterrence to local governments. Recent studies have confirmed that local governments in China will implement stricter environmental regulations in the face of political pressure from their superiors (Kahn, Li, & Zhao, ; Li, Qiao, & Shi, ; Zhang et al, ). However, environmental regulation always is a double‐edged sword, as the regulation may also restrict the development of regional economy when protecting the environment (Greenstone, ; Song, Wang, & Sun, ).…”

“…Due to severe air pollution, political actions aimed at supervising and stimulating local governments to strengthen environmental governance have become necessary in China (Xu, ; Zhang, Chen, & Guo, ). China's central government has established a central environmental supervision system to supervise environmental governance at the local level.…”

Does Whistleblowing Work for Air Pollution Control in China? A Study Based on Three-party Evolutionary Game Model under Incomplete Information

“…It also supervises and handles the issues reported in media or by the public, or problems not properly handled by the local governments [9,36]. Due to limitations in monitoring technology and staffing, it is very difficult for the central environmental supervision department to implement strict all-round supervision throughout the country, and the supervision sometimes fails [18,[47][48][49]. Therefore, the central environmental supervision department's behavior strategy space is (Strict Supervision, Loose Supervision).…”

“…According to the "Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China", the central environmental protection department can directly penalize the local government if the complaint is verified [9]. Whether from an economic perspective or from the evaluation and career development perspective of local officials, the local governments try their best to minimize the number of whistleblowing [17][18][19]. On the other hand, although the whistleblowers are rewarded after the complaint is verified [20][21][22], in practice, they are often harassed in real life and their rights and interests are often violated [23,24], Sustainability 2019, 11,324 3 of 20 which to some extent demotivates the act of whistleblowing.…”

Strategic responses of stigmatized Chinese manufacturing firms to formal and informal environmental regulative pressures through enhanced corporate social responsibility effort

“…Formal and informal environmental regulative pressures are the main independent variables that represent the two kinds of pressures faced by the stigmatized firms. In our empirical context, the MEP at the central government level institutes policies and provides guidance for provincial institutions, whereas the Environmental Protection Bureaus at the local government level is the primary environmental regulators (Yang, ; Zhang, Chen, & Guo, ). For example, the central government will set targets for each province (see Appendix for the provincial emissions targets during the eleventh and twelfth 5‐year plans), based on which the provincial government will allocate emission reduction tasks to each firm within their jurisdictions through various measures (e.g., elimination of out‐of‐date production capacity, desulfurization project, and denitrification project) and closely monitor the local firms to ensure the achievement of provincial targets.…”