Study On The Effects Of Environmental Regulation On City Air Pollution

With the continuous strengthening of China’s goal of building a "resource-conserving" and "environment-friendly" society,the environmental pollution problem,represented by air pollution,has gradually attracted people’s extensive attention.The establishment of a mature and effective environmental governance system has become the direction of the efforts of the governments of all countries.Differently from most studies that used proxy indicators to measure environmental regulation,this paper constructed a comprehensive indicator of environmental regulation intensity based on the quantitative scoring of 1409 environmental policies in China from a multi-dimensional perspective,and attempted to expand the existing research on reflecting the overall appearance of environmental regulation system in China.Taking PM2.5 data of 280 prefecture-level cities in China from 2002 to 2016 as research samples,the impact of environmental regulation on city air pollution was analyzed with the help of a spatial econometric model,and the regional characteristics and spatial spillover effects of environmental regulations were also explored.On this basis,we further analyzed the internal mechanism of environmental regulation on city air pollution by building a moderated mediation model.Relevant research conclusions were as follows:(1)With the help of Moran index and spatial measurement software,the evolution trend and spatial correlation characteristics of city air pollution in China were investigated.The results showed that Chinese city air pollution had experienced an evolution trend from aggravation to mitigation to further aggravation from 2002 to2016.The spatial correlation characteristics of urban air pollution confirm the significant positive correlation between the spatial distribution of air pollution in China.Global Moran Index showed a trend of fluctuation and rise,and city air pollution presented an obvious spatial agglomeration effect during the sample period.(2)To investigate the regional influence characteristics of environmental regulation,this paper constructed a spatial Durbin model of environmental regulation on city air pollution,the following conclusions:(a)Environmental regulation could significantly improve the air pollution in northern cities and eastern cities.The effectiveness of the policy had been confirmed.There was a significant U-shaped relationship between the level of city economic development and air pollution,and economic development in China cannot get rid of the "shackles" of city air pollution.(b)Dynamic space Durbin model confirmed the path-dependent characteristics of city air pollution,the current state of air pollution in cities was strongly influenced by the previous year which indicated the urgency of city air pollution treatment.(c)The decomposition of spatial spillover effect verifies the improvement effect of environmental regulation on air quality in and around the region.In the future,breaking the "barriers" to pollution treatment between regions and strengthening the exchange and cooperation between regions are effective approaches to air pollution treatment.(d)The mediating effect test confirmed that energy intensity was an important way for environmental regulation to influence city air pollution,but such mediating effect was very limited.