Research On The Influence Of Local Government's Environmental Policy On Regional Ecological Efficiency

In the current stage,China is facing the dual pressures of ecological environmental protection and economic development.How to achieve the coordinated development of them is a major issue for local governments.Considering our country's national conditions and the the desirability for sustainable development,we should evaluate environmental policy performance from two aspects of ecological environment protection and economic development.Regional ecological efficiency reflects the coordination between ecological environment protection and economic development.It is an important indicator to measure the level of sustainable development of a region.In recent years,with the advancement of ecological civilization construction and green development strategy,the strength of local government's environmental policy has been enhanced continuously,but regional ecological efficiency has not been improved significantly.The eastern,central and western regions show gradient difference,and the gap is widening,which indicates that environmental policy has not fully achieved the coordination of ecological environmental protection and economic development.So what is the mechanisms and paths of environmental policy affecting regional ecological efficiency? Are these mechanisms and paths consistent in different regions? Are environmental policies effective? These problems arouse people's thinking in theory and practice,and also result in our study.The environmental policy text is a materialized carrier of environmental policy and it is the true reflection and behavioral trace of government in dealing with environmental public affairs.Almost all government's environmental management activities can be found the basis from the policy text.Different from most previous studies looking for proxy variables to measure the strength of various environmental policies,this study conducts a quantitative analysis of large-sample environmental policy texts,and try to measure the strength of various environmental policies directlyfrom the perspective of environmental policy itself,and explore the mechanisms that how various environmental policies affect the multiple stakeholders' behavior and then regional ecological efficiency.The research process is as follows: Firstly,based on the theories of political tournament,Porter hypothesis and political opportunity structure,this study constructs the theoretical framework of“policy-behavior-performance” of local government environmental policy affecting regional ecological efficiency from three dimensions,spatial spillover effect of environmental policy,green technology innovation effect of enterprises and mobilization effect of public environmental participation.Secondly,this study collects3676 environmental policy texts formulated by 30 provincial governments during2008-2017,and uses content analysis method to conduct a quantitative analysis,measuring the strength of various environmental policies in every province over these years from two aspects,the intensity of environmental policy formulation and the intensity of supervision over environmental policy execution.Thirdly,this study uses undesirable SBM-DEA model with super-efficiency to measure the provincial ecological efficiency during 2008-2017;finally,following the test principle of intermediary effect,this study constructs several econometric models connected with each other,and empirically examines the impact mechanism and path of local government environmental policy on regional ecological efficiency.The main contributions of this study are as follows:(1)From the quantitative perspective of environmental policy texts,this paper clarifies the impact mechanism and path of local government environmental policy on regional ecological efficiency.At the national level,the spatial spillover of environmental policies brought about by local government competition affects each other's regional ecological efficiency.Government competition is an important mechanism affecting regional ecological efficiency.In terms of action path,command-control and market-incentive environmental policies affect regional ecological efficiency through enterprise greentechnology innovation with U-curve effect.Enterprise green technology innovation behavior plays a partly mediating role between them.Public participatory environmental policy improves regional ecological efficiency by promoting public environmental participation,and public environmental participation behavior plays a partly mediating role between them.At the regional level,the eastern region's action path is consistent with that of the whole country,but these have not been verified in the central and western regions.The above conclusions not only offer theoretical reference for the central government to improve local government performance evaluation,but also for local governments to effectively appraisal environmental policy.(2)It enriches people's understanding of “Porter Hypothesis” in Chinese Context from a new perspective.Based on the empirical analysis of new environmental policy variables,this study proves that “Porter hypothesis” can be realized under certain conditions in China,which provides new evidence for the establishment of “Porter hypothesis”.What's more,this study finds that the establishment of Porter hypothesis shows regional heterogeneity and policy instruments' heterogeneity,which expands the theoretical connotation of “Porter hypothesis”.It provides a new way of thinking and method to measure the strength of environmental policy.This paper measures the strength of various environmental policies,such as command and control,market incentive and public participation,from the two aspects,the intensity of environmental policy formulation and the intensity of supervision over environmental policy execution.It not only solves the multi-dimensional problem of environmental policy,but also solves the comparability problem.The measurement results are in good agreement with the background facts of China's economic and social development.Moreover,the empirical conclusions based on the measurement results are in accord with intuitive cognition,which proves that the measuring method has good validity.(4)The empirical analysis of this study finds that when the central government's performance evaluation increases theproportion of environmental performance,local governments began to "race to the top",and the strength of the overall national environmental policy has been greatly enhanced,and most provinces in the eastern region have crossed the inflection point.Race to the top has a positive impact on regional ecological efficiency.In the future,the central government should continue to improve the performance evaluation system of local government,and foster the “benign competition” among local governments,promoting more regions to improve ecological efficiency;the command and control environmental policy in the eastern and central regions can lead to “Porter hypothesis”,while it is restrictive in the western region;the market incentive environmental policy in the eastern region can lead to “Porter hypothesis”,while it is restrictive in the central region and not significant in the western region;the public participation environmental policy in the eastern region mobilizes the public to participate in environmental activity,while it is not significant in the central and western regions.In the future,local governments in the central and western regions should strengthen the scientific design of various environmental policy instruments,and improve the relevant supporting measures,realize innovation-driven green development and form a pattern of environmental governance,and fundamentally improve the ecological efficiency in these regions.