Research On Pollution Control Effects Of Water Pollution Prevention Policies In Chinese River Basins

Since the reform and opening up,China’s economy has developed at a high speed Continuously and achieved world-renowned achievements.However,the environmental problems brought by economic development should not be underestimated.Water,as an indispensable resource for human survival and an important resource for promoting regional economic development,have been receiving widespread attention for its pollution.The high pollution discharge brought by the rapid growth of the total population and the extensive economic development have caused frequent water pollution problems and aggravated the contradiction between the supply and demand of water resources in China.Improving water quality is a problem that needs to be solved urgently.Therefore,the government has introduced a series of policy documents,which improve the water quality to some extent.However,the occurrence of corporate rent-seeking behavior may provide local government officials with higher incentives than promotion,leading to inefficient or even ineffective environmental governance.Therefore,the governance effect of the environmental policy promulgated from the top to down has greater uncertainty,and its specific governance effect needs to be investigated.This paper takes the pollutant control plan of the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" issued by the former Ministry of Environmental Protection as a starting point.After sorting out the previous policy documents and describes the pollution situation in each basin,combined with the theory of regulatory failure,commission-agent theory and policy content,the paper puts forward theoretical analysis of the effectiveness of the implementation of the "Twelfth Five-Year" pollutant emission reduction plan.Subsequently,based on the policy documents of the "Water Pollution Prevention and Control Plan for Key River Basins(2011-2015)",the monitoring points were divided into experimental groups and control groups,and the difference-in-difference method was used for this empirical analysis.It turns out that the implementation of the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" pollutant reduction plan has indeed improved the water quality of the experimental group.However,the results of improving water quality are not comprehensive.Furthermore,this paper conducted a parallel trend test and a placebo test to ensure that the results obtained are objective and accurate.On this basis,we explored the mechanism of prevention and control policies,and found that local governments are more inclined to choose ’end governance’ to improve water quality.Specifically,considering that the total amount of industrial wastewater discharge is simultaneously affected by the two-way effect of the economic growth part and the environmental protection part of the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan",the regression of the total industrial wastewater discharge using the difference-in-difference method is indistinguishable from the result;The quality of the industrial wastewater discharge of the experimental group has not been improved after the implementation of the policy,which shows that the government does not attach importance to the implementation of strict discharge standards for industrial wastewater.Under the constraints of the same effect,cost pressures are more likely to drive local governments to choose the end governance method.This paper further explored the impact of the heterogeneity of natural factors at urban river monitoring points on the effect of policy implementation,and found that at river monitoring points with high pollutant transfer efficiency,local governments are inert to pollution control and the pollution control effect will be weakened.Finally,this paper combined with Chinese actual national conditions,and puts forward targeted policy recommendations to promote the efficient implementation of environmental policies by the government and provide suggestions for the construction of ecological civilization.