Environmental Interview And Local Government Industrial Land Transfer

The pursuit of economic growth or the protection of green ecological environment and the reduction of carbon emissions have always been the hot topic of research in China’s development direction.Especially in the current situation of depleting land resources,the country attaches great importance to environmental protection and energy saving under limited resources,and has put forward the goal of "carbon emission and carbon neutrality".However,the dependence of local governments on land finance still exists,and the excessive granting of industrial land may lead to serious environmental problems.To address this issue,in 2014,China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection(MEP)announced the Interim Measures for Environmental Protection Interviews by the MEP.The environmental protection interviews provide transparent and open access to key local officials who are negligent in their environmental protection duties.Based on panel data on government industrial land grants and environmental protection interviews in more than two hundred prefecture-level cities between 2010 and 2018,this paper evaluates the disincentive effect of the environmental protection interview system implemented since 2014 on local governments’ industrial land grants using a double-difference model.This is used to identify the behavioral logic of local governments’industrial land concessions.The heterogeneous effects of the implementation effect of environmental interviews under different types of cities are also further measured.This paper finds that after local governments implement the system of environmental interviews,environmental interviews are effective in suppressing the area of local industrial land concessions.The average area of industrial land concessions will be reduced by 49 hectares,indicating that environmental interviews can correct land resource mismatch to a certain extent.The policy of environmental interviews has a supervisory effect on the carbon reduction behavior of local governments and can correct the land resource mismatch.However,the deterrent effect of environmental talks on industrial land area is not long-term,and the deterrent effect of environmental talks starts to weaken after three years.The finding that environmental talks can suppress the area of local industrial land concessions is proved reliable by the propensity score matching double difference test,and the suppressive effect of environmental talks on the area of industrial land can reach 51 ha.The stability of the empirical results is also demonstrated by the placebo test.The effect of the environmental interview system on industrial land use is heterogeneous in terms of its implementation effect in different cities.In cities with higher levels of STI,the effect of environmental talks is more pronounced;in cities with higher modernization and larger population size,the more effective the environmental talks are in constraining industrial land area concessions;however,the impact of environmental talks has significant regional heterogeneity,and the impact of environmental talks on industrial land concession behavior in western cities is weaker.Based on the results of the empirical study,this paper makes the following recommendations:(1)industrial land concessions can be included in the quantitative assessment of the effect of environmental talks.This will not only increase the strength of the environmental talks,but also maintain the sustainability and investigability of the effect of environmental talks.(2)Feedback on the implementation of environmental protection talks need to be tailored to local conditions.Different cities have their own characteristics in the conduct of environmental interviews,so local governments have to be selective about their policies when implementing environmental regulations.In this way,they can increase environmental performance in the region and have the effect of improving regional environmental quality.(3)Local governments need to adopt some restrictions in industrial land supply,such as floor area ratio,density index and green production conditions for enterprises,to make green investment.(4)For enterprises,they should improve their scientific and technological innovation capabilities,increase the volume ratio and land use efficiency of industrial land,conduct clean production,reduce pollution emissions,strengthen investment in environmental protection,and increase their competitiveness in green production technology.