Impact of rating and praise campaigns on local government environmental governance efficiency: Evidence from the campaign of establishment of national sanitary cities in China

Abstract

Background Ecological and environmental protection is essential to achieving sustainable and high-quality development, which highlights the important role of environmental governance. In terms of the practical actions of environmental governance, the central government in China has carried out continuous rating and praise campaigns, and local governments have actively promoted this effort. However, the related performance consequences have not been empirically investigated. We aimed to verify whether this incentive policy can improve the efficiency of environmental governance and whether this governance method has long-term effects. In addition, we sought to identify mechanisms through which the policy can improve environmental governance. Method We take the rating and praise campaign of the Establishment of National Sanitary Cities (EONSCs) as a quasi-natural experiment and use the panel data for 174 cities from 2004 to 2016 and the propensity score matching-difference in differences (PSM-DID) method to test the impact of rating and praise campaigns on environmental governance efficiency. Results EONSCs campaign can improve the efficiency of environmental governance by 0.7595 (p<0.01), which is significant at the 1% level; the effects are clearly significant during the evaluation process and the year in which cities are named National Sanitary Cities (NSCs) but decrease annually thereafter. The EONSCs campaign has a significant promoting effect on public services provision, such as public infrastructure investment, public transportation and education. Conclusions (1) The rating and praise campaigns can effectively improve the efficiency of environmental governance; (2) the incentive effect is distorted and is not a long-term effect; (3) the impact of the rating and praise campaign of EONSCs on the efficiency of environmental governance is mainly realized through the provision of corresponding public services that are closely related to environmental protection. The findings of this paper provide empirical support for the effectiveness of the central government’s rating and praise campaigns and could motivate local governments to actively participate in environmental governance. Moreover, the findings provide an important reference for further improving the rating and praise campaigns and the level of environmental governance.

Favorable Fiscal Self-Sufficiency Enables Local Governments to Better Improve the Environmental Governance—Evidence from China’s Lower-Pollution Areas

“…Zhou et al [37] make some explorations on the efficiency of regional environmental governance in Guangdong, China through using GDP as the desired output [38][39][40]. Tang et al [41] find that the rating and praise campaigns can effectively improve the efficiency of environmental governance, while the incentive effect is distorted and is not a long-term effect. Wu et al [42] conclude that the extent to which the government encourages people and non-governmental organizations and local residents to participate in environmental governance will affect the efficiency level of environmental governance.…”

The Interaction Mechanism of Fiscal Pressure, Local Government Behavioral Preferences and Environmental Governance Efficiency: Evidence from the Yangtze River Delta Region of China

“…The value of efficiency also needs to be emphasized in environmental governance. Environmental governance efficiency (EGE) involves measuring the effective use of inputs by the output effects of environmental governance [ 15 , 16 ]. It is easy to ignore the manpower and financial investment of local governments by focusing only on the changes in environmental pollution indicators [ 16 ].…”

“…Environmental governance efficiency (EGE) involves measuring the effective use of inputs by the output effects of environmental governance [ 15 , 16 ]. It is easy to ignore the manpower and financial investment of local governments by focusing only on the changes in environmental pollution indicators [ 16 ]. Measuring the EGE from the perspective of inputs and outputs is conducive to reflecting the effectiveness of environmental governance in a more scientific and comprehensive manner [ 17 ].…”