Impact Of Fiscal Policy On Energy Saving And Emission Reduction On City Environmental Inequality

The balanced and coordination nature of city development have become an inevitable requirement for speeding up new economic development pattern and achieving high-quality development in our country.In reality,the differences of pollution exposure risks of social groups in different regions have significantly affected the balanced development of cities,and become a big problem in the process of economic model transformation and upgrading.The fiscal policy on energy saving and emission reduction effectively combines environmental control policies with fiscal policies,which can provide necessary financial and resource support for city development,so as to improve internal environmental pollution inequality by controlling the scale of local pollution.However,few studies have directly linked the fiscal policy on energy saving and emission reduction with city environmental inequality.Under the circumstances,this paper helps enrich the existing research on environmental inequality.It helps open up the dark box of the relationship between the fiscal policy on energy saving and emission reduction and environmental inequality and helps provide possible ideas for solving the problem of environmental inequality within the city.Based on theory of regional non-balanced development,financial theory of ecological environment,theory of industrial escalation and the Porter-hypothesis,this paper carries out a theoretical analysis of the fiscal policy on energy saving and emission reduction and city environmental inequality,and proposes a research hypothesis to clarify that this pilot policy can not only directly restrain environmental inequality,but also indirectly affect environmental inequality through industrial structure upgrading and green technology innovation.According to the inequality coefficient formula,the population and pollution data of 2575county-level cities were used to calculate the environmental inequality index of 262 prefecture-level cities.Furthermore,the comprehensive demonstration cities of fiscal policies on energy saving and emission reduction are taken as quasi-natural experiments,and the direct and indirect impacts are tested and analyzed using the difference-indifferences with multiple time periods model,and the heterogeneity analysis is made according to the classification of city characteristics.This research mainly draws the following conclusions:(1)The coefficient of city environmental inequality in China presents earlier increase and later decrease trend.(2)The fiscal policy on energy saving and emission reduction on comprehensive demonstration cities has an obvious promoting effect on alleviating city environmental inequality,which remains valid after a series of endogenous tests and robustness tests.(3)The fiscal policy on energy saving and emission reduction can reduce the index of environmental inequality of prefecture-level cities by promoting the upgrading of industrial structure and improving the level of green technology innovation.(4)Due to different characteristics of cities,this pilot policies affects more large and medium-sized cities,non-resourcebased cities,eastern and western cities,and innovative cities than others.This study puts forward the following policy recommendations: We should attach importance to the role of green fiscal policy,organically combine environmental policy with fiscal policy,and make full use of financial resources in green and low-carbon development.We should strengthen the combination of upgrading the industrial structure and improving the level of green technology innovation,and fully play the role of government incentives for resource allocation and innovation compensation.Put delicacy management of environmental policies into consideration,and formulate corresponding policies in line with different characteristics of city industries to enhance the effectiveness of city environmental management with intelligent manageability.And also we need build a multi-agent model featuring the participation of multiple entities,and promote the formation of a new pattern of environmental governance featuring government oversight,market dominance,enterprise implementation and public supervision.