The Government’s Environmental Attention and the Sustainability of Environmental Protection Expenditure: Evidence from China

Abstract

Transformation to a green economy depends on long-term, continuous government financial investments in the environmental protection field. This study used the budget and final accounts of provincial environmental protection expenditure in China from 2007 to 2019 to establish a two-way fixed-effects model to verify the impact of government attention on environmental protection expenditure. The sustainability of Chinese local governments’ environmental protection expenditure is weak, and the fluctuations conform to the punctuated equilibrium characteristics. Fluctuations in government attention have a significant positive impact on changes in fiscal environmental protection expenditure, and the characteristics of campaign governance are relatively obvious. Fiscal transparency can strengthen the relationship between government attention and the environmental protection expenditure budget; however, the adjustment effect on the final accounts of environmental protection expenditure, which depend more on the budget implementation process, is not significant. To improve the effectiveness of environmental governance, government departments must pay long-term and sustained attention to environmental issues, improve the transparency of the implementation process of environmental protection expenditure budgets, strengthen the role of public supervision, and ensure investment in environmental governance.