On The Subjective Well-being Effects Of Education And Environmental Protection Expenditures

People-centered development is the starting point and goal of China’s modernization drive.It is also the root and soul of the new vision of development.In2015,At the 10 th meeting of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform,the CPC Central Committee pointed out that the gold content of the reform plan should be fully displayed to give the people a greater sense of gain.The sense of acquisition is built on the basis of objective acquisition.Subjective public service satisfaction reflects people’s sense of acquisition in public services.Compared with the input and output of public service,public service satisfaction really reflects the people-oriented.The quantity and quality of public services provided by the government are directly related to residents’ satisfaction with public services and the improvement of people’s sense of gain.Under the circumstance that fiscal expenditure is taken from the people and used for the people and the contradiction between local government revenue and expenditure is increasing,to improve the subjective well-being of residents,on the one hand,certain fiscal expenditure is needed to guarantee,on the other hand,fiscal expenditure needs to improve the quality and efficiency.Local governments are responsible for providing public services to residents.This paper focuses on the improvement of residents’ subjective well-being,researching mainly from two aspects:whether the local government can do and how to do.As compulsory education and environmental protection are both important matters concerning people’s livelihood,they have a wide coverage and strong perception for residents.At the same time,due to data limitations,this paper takes education expenditure and environmental protection expenditure as examples for analysis.First of all,the relevant literature is sorted out and relevant theories are analyzed to provide theoretical guidance and realistic paving for the study of this paper.Secondly,the "ability" of local governments is reflected in the fact that fiscal expenditure is constrained by fiscal revenue.Therefore,the expenditure behavior of local governments in education and environmental protection under the constraint of fiscal revenue is analyzed,taking "replacing business tax with Value-Added tax" as an example for empirical analysis.Finally,it analyzes how the local government "does",that is,whether the given fiscal expenditure improves the subjective wellbeing of residents.Using regional data and "Chinese Social Survey",empirical analysis to the relation betwween education expenditure and residents’ satisfaction with compulsory education service,environmental protection expenditure and the residents’ satisfaction with environmental governance in a Hierarchical Linear Model and IV,and then discuss influence mechanism from the perspective of the public service quality perception.The main research findings of this paper:First,fiscal expenditure is constrained by fiscal revenue.During the study period(2009-2015),other conditions remain the same,when local governments face financial constraints,they will relatively reduce education expenditure and environmental protection expenditure.The change of environmental protection expenditure is greater than that of education expenditure.Second,Chinese residents’ satisfaction with compulsory education service is relatively high,but education expenditure has no significant impact on residents’ satisfaction with compulsory education service.The analysis of influencing mechanism shows that one of the important influencing factors of residents’ satisfaction with compulsory education service is residents’ perception of fairness in compulsory education,while education expenditure does not improve residents’ perception of fairness in compulsory education.Residents’ perception of fairness in compulsory education comes from the objective fairness of compulsory education.This paper further analyzes the equality of entrance opportunity and the equality of education service quality.In terms of equality of entrance opportunity,there are some gaps in the expenditure of compulsory education between urban and rural areas in China,but the gap is narrowing and tends to be fair.The inter-school difference reflected by "school choice fever" is an important factor affecting residents’ sense of fairness in compulsory education.In terms of education service quality,the gap of educational resources between schools will affect residents’ sense of fairness in the quality of compulsory education service.The quality of education service is not only related to the expenditure of compulsory education,but also related to the use of the expenditure of compulsory education.In the process of using compulsory education funds,there are various problems such as delay,delay,interception and so on,which affect the healthy development of compulsory education and thus affect the residents’ perception of fairness in compulsory education.Third,Chinese residents’ satisfaction with environmental governance is relatively low compared with residents’ satisfaction with compulsory education service.Environmental protection expenditure helps to improve residents’ satisfaction with environmental governance.The analysis of influencing mechanism shows that when other conditions remain unchanged,when residents perceive air pollution is not very serious or they are satisfied with the perceived environmental quality,the satisfaction of environmental governance can be improved.Environmental protection expenditure affects residents’ perception of environmental quality and public environmental literacy,then improve residents’ satisfaction with environmental governance.At the same time,environmental information disclosure did not play the expected moderating effect on the relationship between air pollution perception or environmental quality perception and residents’ satisfaction with environmental governance.The reason is that the degree of environmental information disclosure is too low.The main innovations of this paper are as follows:First,innovation of research perspective.(1)This paper studies the subjective well-being effects of fiscal expenditure from the perspective of public service satisfaction.The main purpose of government expenditure is to provide public services.Therefore,public service satisfaction can better focus on the subjective well-being effects of fiscal expenditure,and it is clear that the destination of fiscal expenditure is the people.The content of inspection is objective acquisition,and the standard of inspection is subjective feeling,which corresponds to the subjective well-being of residents.Public service satisfaction truly reflects the people-oriented.Improve people’s sense of gain and combining with new era on the development of the high quality of public service,specific analysis of education spending for the residents of compulsory education service satisfaction and the influence of environmental protection spending the impact on the residents’ satisfaction with environmental governance,on the one hand,is conducive to deepening the residents to study the formation mechanism of public service satisfaction,on the other hand,enrich the era connotation of public service.(2)In addition,This paper analyzes the influencing mechanism from the perspective of public service quality perception.Because fiscal expenditure belongs to input,input is not equal to output,and output is not equal to benefit.Only when the effect of public services provided is truly felt by residents,residents’ satisfaction with public services will be increased.Moreover,some measured performance indicators only give the technical definition of public service quality,failing to highlight and endow the public value of interaction between public departments and the public as well as equity and justice.This provides new empirical evidence for further understanding the relationship between fiscal expenditure and public service satisfaction.This paper analyzes the influencing mechanism from the perspective of public service quality perception,and constructs a theoretical framework from the perspective of residents’ demand perception,which is also an extension of this field.(3)This paper combines economic theory with sociology and psychology theories such as demand theory and customer satisfaction.His interdisciplinary analysis has expanded his research field.Second,innovation of research methods.(1)When analyzing the relationship between fiscal expenditure and residents’ public service satisfaction,this paper combines quasi-natural experiment,multilayer linear model and instrumental variable method to identify the causal relationship between fiscal expenditure and public service satisfaction.(2)Combined with data structure,the Hierarchical Linear Model of Woltman et al.(2012)and the mediation effect analysis of Yildiz(2016)Tan et al.(2017)were combined to form a Hierarchical Linear Mediation effect model,which was applied to analyze the influence mechanism of fiscal expenditure on public service satisfaction.Third,new study found.In this study,the relationship between financial expenditure and public service satisfaction varies with specific expenditure.The increase of education expenditure does not improve residents’ satisfaction with compulsory education service,while the increase of environmental protection expenditure significantly improves residents’ satisfaction with environmental governance.(1)Based on the government providing public services through fiscal expenditure,this paper finds that residents’ perception of public service quality is an important transmission mechanism of fiscal expenditure affecting residents’ satisfaction with public service.(2)Based on different financial expenditures,this paper investigates the different emphases of public service quality perception.From the perspective of fairness perception,it is found that the reason why education expenditure has no significant impact on residents’ satisfaction with compulsory education service is that education expenditure does not increase residents’ sense of fairness in compulsory education.From the perspective of efficiency perception,it is found that environmental protection expenditure has a significant impact on residents’ satisfaction with environmental governance because environmental protection expenditure makes residents fully feel the improvement of environmental quality.