An Analysis Of The Effectiveness Of Central Environmental Supervision On Region Air Quality

In the past decades,the central government attaches importance to environmental protection,which has improved air quality continuously.The degree of discretion given by the central government for local governments in environmental governance,namely Environmental Decentralization and Environmental Centralization,has long been a controversial issue in academics.As a representative of Environmental Centralization,Central Environmental Supervision（CES）has been widely concerned from all sectors of society since its implementation in 2015.The purpose of this study aims to explore whether the regional air quality significantly improved based the centralized environmental governance model.This study,by using 2013-2019China’s 293 cities,degree of air quality data,using panel bidirectional fixed effects model,will be subject to CES natural experiment,an empirical analysis of CES’s impact on local air quality,and further discusses the different types of sub-pollutants in the effectiveness of governance in CES,and the heterogeneity effects of local officials on CES.This paper attempts to answer the following three questions:（1）Can CES effectively improve regional air quality?If it works,does the effect have last validity?（2）Do local officials make equal efforts to control the six types of sub-pollutants in the air?（3）Will the personal characteristics of local officials have a heterogeneous impact on CES?We made several major conclusions in this study.Firstly,CES has significant positive effects in different time Windows（short-,mid-and long-term）.Specifically,the short-term effect of CES is the best,the long-term effect is better than the medium-term effect.Second,the effect of CES is different in different air sub-pollutants,especially for the pollutant indicators that the central government has clearly carried out quantitative assessment,such as PM2.5,PM10,CO and SO₂,while NO₂ and O₃ are not effectively controlled.This study on the centralization in the relative effectiveness of atmospheric pollution in our country has made an empirical contribution to the marginal.In addition,this study also helps to understand the problem of local officials’selection,to the central government to develop a more reasonable incentive mechanism to avoid deviation,in the implementation of the environmental policy in place to provide certain reference.To some extent,the environmental governance system with the characteristics of centralization has strengthened the implementation of environmental policies and effectively improved air pollution.However,how to maintain sustainable improvement of air quality remains a big challenge,especially regarding ozone and nitrogen oxides in the air.Based on the above,we proposed three policy suggestions in this article.First,CES should establish a long-term normalized governance mechanism.Second,the assessment results of CES are included in the performance assessment system of local government officials as a positive political incentive rather than punishment.Thirdly,different regulatory policies should be formulated for different types of air sub-pollutants.