Evaluating the Efficacy of Government Spending on Air Pollution Control: A Case Study from Beijing

Abstract

The reform and opening up of the Chinese economy over the last 40 years has led to rapid economic development. However, with the rapid expansion of the economy, increasingly serious air pollution is apparent. In order to control urban air pollution effectively, Chinese governments at all levels have invested large sums every year. However, it has become a difficult issue which influences public government decisions with respect to how and according to what standard to distribute financial funds so as to improve air quality while saving money at the same time. Taking Beijing as an example, this paper investigates the ten-year change in the annual daily mean of inhalable particulate matter (PM10), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) from the year of 2006 to 2015, researches the invested funds in environmental protection in Beijing, and establishes a relationship between the atmospheric indexes of the above three parameters and government-invested funds in environmental protection. According to model analysis, government financial input has an obvious influence on the improvement of air quality. However, during the long period of financial input, the degree of air quality improvement will reduce gradually as time goes by. There exists a direct link between the effectiveness of government financial input to promote air quality and the air quality index, which means when the pollutant standards index is poor (i.e., the corresponding pollutant concentration is higher), the effectiveness will be more apparent. On the contrary, when the index is at a good level, the effectiveness of government financial input is very small. To achieve the best air quality conditions, the government should set the detailed financial input at or over the first-grade standard according to urban air quality standards.

Efficiency of the EU Environmental Policy in Struggling with Fine Particulate Matter (PM2.5): How Agriculture Makes a Difference?

“…This is similar to the conclusion from Bostan et al [38], who also found a significant effect of public expenditures on the decrease of pollution. Also similar observation was found by Xie and Wang [44]-according to their analysis government financial input has an obvious influence on the improvement of air quality, especially when they considered inhalable particulate matter (PM 2.5 , PM 10 ), sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ), and nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) in the year 2006 to 2015 in China. Based on our results, we can conclude that the EU environment policy is an efficient tool to struggle with PM 2.5 .…”

Impacts of the Allocation of Governmental Resources for Improving the Environment. An Empirical Analysis on Developing European Countries

“…While the rising concerns of the individuals were mostly determined by the impacts of environment degradation on their health and their quality of life, governments and researchers had a much larger perspective looking to determine also specific correlations between environment condition and other economic indicators. In this regard, literature includes studies on the relationships between environment and economic growth [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8], taxation [9][10][11][12], government or private expenditures [13][14][15][16] in order to find appropriate solutions for counteracting the process of environment's degradation and to adjust the environmental policies [17][18][19][20][21][22].…”

Does environment quality and public spending on environment promote life expectancy in China? Evidence from a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag approach

“…For the air quality ranking, China was ranked the second-worst, with a score of 18.81, a decrease of 14.15% compared with 10 years ago. 44 From the global perspective, outdoor particularly air pollution resulted in 2.9 million deaths in 2017, which shows an increase of 1.7 million from 1990. This shows that environmental quality in terms of air pollution can influence life expectancy and our empirical estimation may further verify this argument.…”

“…According to the ‘Environmental Performance Index’ report in 2014, China was ranked 118th out of 178 countries. For the air quality ranking, China was ranked the second‐worst, with a score of 18.81, a decrease of 14.15% compared with 10 years ago 44 . From the global perspective, outdoor particularly air pollution resulted in 2.9 million deaths in 2017, which shows an increase of 1.7 million from 1990.…”