The Environment Governance Effects Of Media Attention

In March 2020,the State Council General Office of the People’s Republic of China issued the Guidelines on Building a Modern Environment Governance System,proposing to build a modern environment governance system with multiple participation and multi governance.One of the important aspects is to strengthen public opinion supervision and encourage the media to expose all kinds of ecological environment damage problems,environmental emergencies and environmental violations.This shows,the media,as an important social force,constantly enhancing its role in environment governance,which is of great significance to the construction of an effective modern environmental governance system.In particular,media reports on local pollution issues,whether and how to promote local governments to control pollution and improve environmental quality has become a hot topic in academic research.Based on air pollution control,this paper discusses the impact of media attention on local government’s pollution treatment from both theoretical and empirical aspects.In China’s environment governance system,as the main body of environment governance policies,local governments are subject to environmental supervision pressure from the superior government and supervision pressure from the public opinion.These two pressures are important forces to promote local governments to carry out pollution control,which also are the two main channels that media attention influence local government’s pollution treatment.Therefore,the theoretical discussion and empirical analysis of this paper are carried out from two aspects: one is the impact of the pressure from the superior government on the local government’s pollution treatment under the media attention;the other is the impact of the pressure from the public on the local government’s pollution treatment under the media attention.Firstly,unlike Western countries,all newspapers in China belong to the state.Media supervision is a governance pattern of “Government dominated,and Media supplemented”.This means that China’s media governance is internalized in the government governance system,so it plays an internal governance role rather than an external supervision role.Therefore,by helping the superior government to solve the problem of information asymmetry in the principal-agent process,media reports on local pollution problems will help the superior government better supervise the local government and bring pressure on the local government’s pollution treatment.Based on this logic,this paper takes prefecture-level cities as the research object and uses provincial newspaper reporting data to carry out empirical analysis.The empirical results show that by strengthen the provincial governments’ supervision of air pollution in prefecture level cities,the provincial newspapers’ reports on air pollution in prefecture-level cities in the province will promote the provincial governments to increase investment in environment treatment,reduce industrial pollution emissions to control pollution and improve air quality.This indicates that the superior government will influence the local government’s pollution treatment through environmental supervision under the media attention.Secondly,as mentioned above,media public opinion supervision in China is a kind of supervision with moderate autonomy under the permission of the government.Therefore,China’s media reports on local pollution mainly reflect the information intermediary function of the media,rather than guiding the value judgment of the public through public agenda setting or facilitating the formation of public opinion.This means that China’s media play a relatively weak role in promoting the public to form a cohesive force and solve problems.However,when severe pollution weather occurs,the media will also increase the coverage of local pollution issues and use harsh words in order to meet the public’s needs and maintain their image and reputation.At this time,the media’s reports on local pollution problems will resonate with the public,prompting more people to “vote with their mouths” to directly express their appeal for air quality improvement to the local government,thus bringing public opinion pressure to the local government.Based on this logic,this paper uses the data reported by newspapers during heavy pollution weather to carry out empirical analysis.The empirical results show that during the period of heavy air pollution,newspaper reports on air pollution increase significantly;moreover,under the pressure of public opinion triggered by media reports,local governments will intensify the implementation of emergency response measures to control pollution and improve air quality.This shows that the public will express their appeal for air quality improvement to the local government through “vote with their mouths” under the media attention,which will affect the local government’s pollution treatment.Thirdly,the public not only express their appeal for air quality improvement to the local government through“vote with their mouths”,but also exert pressure on local governments through “vote with their foots” when the air quality demand cannot be met.In this scenario,media reports on local pollution problems will affect individual preferences and choices,prompting urban residents more likely to leave the city when air quality needs cannot be met,which bringing another kind of pressure to the local government.In order to comprehensively analyze the negative impact of urban residents’ departure on the city,this paper uses urban housing price data for empirical analysis.The empirical results show that the increase of media pollution reports will force local governments to control pollution and improve air quality by exacerbating the impact of air pollution on urban housing prices.This indicates that under the media attention,the public will exert pressure on local governments to control air pollution through “vote with their foots” to influence the local government’s pollution treatment.The innovation of this paper is mainly reflected in three aspects.First,this paper provides new findings and evidence for the internal logic and mechanism of media governance in China by analyzing the relationship between media attention,environment supervision of superior governments and local government’s pollution treatment.Secondly,this paper further discusses the relationship between media attention,public opinion supervision and local government’s pollution treatment,pointing out the conditionality of effective public opinion supervision on local governments by “vote with their mouths” under media attention,and the possibility of exerting pressure on local governments by “vote with their foots”.Third,the research of this paper has realized a complete system with the local government as the center and taking the superior government and the public into consideration,so as to more comprehensively and systematically investigate the influence of media attention on the local government’s pollution treatment.And the research of this paper also provides valuable exploration for better playing the role of official public opinion and folk public opinion in restraining and regulating local government behavior and its supervision function in the field of public governance.