Research On The Impact Of Chinese Environmental Regulations On The Synergistic Effect Of Pollution Control And Carbon Reduction

With the construction of China’s ecological civilization has entered a critical period in which carbon reduction is the key strategic direction,promoting the synergy of pollution control and carbon reduction,promoting the overall green transformation of economic and social development,and realizing the improvement of ecological and environmental quality from quantitative to qualitative changes.How to optimize environmental governance,achieve the synergistic reduction of carbon emissions and pollution prevention,and thus promote green and lowcarbon quality development,has been one of the major issues of common concern to the Chinese government and academia.As an emerging achievement under China’s unique administrative system and the government’s green performance appraisal system,Chinese environmental regulations play an important role in promoting the synergy of pollution control and carbon reduction,and strengthening ecological civilization construction.Based on the above,this study takes environmental governance policies as an opportunity to investigate the effect of Chinese environmental regulations on the collaborative emission reduction of pollution and carbon and its mechanisms by using manually collected data on environmental governance policies,micro-enterprise data such as the database of Chinese listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares,the database of Chinese patents,and the panel data of Chinese counties and Chinese cities.This provides an important theoretical basis and empirical experience for China to further optimize the national ecological and environmental governance system,achieve the goal of “double carbon ” and build “ beautiful China”.The main research contents of this study are as follows:First,this study defines in detail the connotation of the Chinese environmental regulation and synergistic effect of pollution control and carbon reduction in order to clarify the difference between the Chinese environmental regulation explored in this study and the previous environmental regulation policies.Next,this study systematically combs the classical economic theoretical foundations and existing literature related to the research topic,and presents the marginal contributions of this study based on assimilating and drawing on theoretical and empirical studies.In addition,this study discusses in depth the trend of institutional evolution aimed at achieving the synergistic emission reduction of pollution and carbon reduction,and provides a detailed analysis of the current situation of the synergistic emission reduction of pollution and carbon reduction in China and its spatial and temporal dimensional characteristics.Second,differing from previous literature studies that explored environmental target constraints on a particular environmental pollutant alone,this study explores its impact on the synergistic effect of pollution control and carbon reduction based on the perspective of carbon reduction and pollution prevention and control synergistic constraints.Moreover,we use a panel data of 283prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2003 to 2018 to empirically test the synergistic effect of urban pollution control and carbon reduction by environmental target constraints using a frontier method of econometrics,the“heterogeneity-robustness” estimator.Empirical results show that environmental target constraints significantly enhance the synergistic effect of urban pollution control and carbon reduction.Mechanisms analysis suggests that environmental target constraints can significantly enhance the synergistic effect of pollution control and carbon reduction in cities through the intrinsic mechanisms of promoting technological innovation,improving energy consumption efficiency and increasing pollution control investment.Third,unlike the traditional studies on the governance effects of commandand-control and economic-incentive environmental regulation policies,this study is the first to investigate the impact of environmental regulatory policy on the collaborative emission reduction of pollution and carbon from the perspective of environmental supervision.Moreover,based on the 2010-2020 Chinese county statistics,a difference-in-difference model with two-way fixed effects is used to identify the causal effect of the central environmental protection inspectors’ influence on the synergistic treatment of pollution control and carbon reduction,using the cities where the central environmental protection inspectors are stationed as a quasi-natural experiment.The empirical results show that central environmental protection inspection system significantly facilitates the ability of collaborative governance to reduce pollution and carbon emissions in counties.Mechanisms analysis suggests that central environmental protection inspector system promotes the coordinated emission reduction of pollution and carbon in counties by exerting influence mechanisms such as “deterrence effect”,“reverse force effect” and “incentive effect”.Fourth,distinguishing from existing studies that focus on the effects of environmental regulatory policies on macro-level variables,this study discusses the impact of government environmental assessment system on the collaborative emission reduction of pollution and carbon based on the enterprise level.Moreover,using the database of Chinese listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen Ashares during 2010-2021,this study conducts A quasi-natural experiment in pilot cities for accountability audit of natural resource of leading cadres,and uses the Time-varying DID model to empiricously test the effect of government environmental protection assessment system on the collaborative emission reduction of enterprises’ pollution and carbon.The results reveal that government environmental protection assessment system significantly promotes collaborative emission reduction of pollution and carbon in enterprises.Mechanisms analysis suggests that government environmental protection assessment system can enhance the collaborative governance ability of enterprises in reducing pollution and carbon emissions through the intrinsic mechanisms of transforming government functions,exerting the compensation effect of innovation,and improving the efficiency of capacity utilization.Fifth,distinct from the current general research perspective that focuses on the issue of synergistic emission reduction by pollution and carbon reduction,this study takes national high-tech industrial development zones as the research object.Moreover,based on the data for 283 prefecture-level and above cities in China during 2003-2018,the effect of green location-oriented policies on the synergistic effect of urban pollution and carbon reduction is empirically tested using the Time-varying DID model in a quasi-natural experiment with cities that disclose their national high-tech industrial development zone policies.Empirical results show that green location-oriented policies can significantly contribute to the synergistic effect of urban pollution control and carbon reduction.Mechanisms analysis suggests that green location-oriented policies can promote the synergistic effect of urban pollution control and carbon reduction with mechanisms involving the industrial agglomeration economic effect,industrial structure optimization effect,and green technology innovation effect.In general,this study systematically evaluates the synergies of pollution control and carbon reduction of Chinese environmental regulations,and answers the key question of how Chinese environmental regulations affect the synergies of pollution control and carbon reduction.It provides a reliable theoretical basis and empirical evidence for examining the implementation effect of Chinese environmental regulation policies,and provides policy implications for further optimizing the construction of China’s environmental governance system,promoting integrated pollution and carbon reduction management,and strengthening the sustainable development capacity between economic growth and environmental protection.