Study On The Impact Of Environmental Protection Tax On Air Pollution

Air pollution is related to residents’health,social welfare,ecological environment and economic development,so it has become the focus of public and academic concerns.With the high attention of our government and continuous introduction of various environmental regulation policies,our air quality is constantly improving.It has been more than five years since China’s Environmental Protection Tax Law（hereinafter referred to as the Environmental tax）came into effect on January 1,2018.This paper uses the air quality index（AQI）of prefecture-level cities and the statistical data of five air pollutant concentrations to analyze the effect of environmental protection tax on air pollution control,and puts forward policy suggestions for further improvement of environmental protection tax,which has strong practical significance.This paper firstly studies the relationship between environmental protection tax and air pollution from a theoretical point of view.On this basis,this paper uses 16 quarters of air data from 2016-2019 at the prefecture-level city level to construct a differential model for regression analysis.In order to verify the robustness of the reference regression in this paper,several robustness tests are also set up.In addition,this paper analyzes the heterogeneity of urban air pollution degree,urban north-south geographical location and urban industrial structure.Finally,this paper also studies the air pollution control mechanism of environmental protection tax from the perspective of green innovation.The results of the research are as follows:（1）Environmental protection tax significantly improved the air quality of prefecture-level cities in the experimental group,and reduced the concentration of five air pollutants,PM_2.5,PM₁₀,sulfur dioxide（SO₂）,carbon monoxide（CO）and nitrogen dioxide（NO₂）（all of which are expressed by chemical formula below）.A series of robustness tests increased the credibility of environmental tax to improve air quality in the experimental cities.（2）The results of heterogeneity analysis of air pollution levels show that the higher the urban air pollution level,the more significant the effect of air pollution control.The heterogeneity analysis of the"Qinling-Huaihe Line"shows that the effect of environmental taxes on air pollution control in cities north of the"Qinling-Huaihe Line"is better.The heterogeneity analysis of urban industrial structures shows that environmental taxes have a better effect on improving the air quality of resource-based cities than non-resource-based cities.（3）Mechanism analysis shows that environmental protection tax promotes local green innovation,and then plays an effect on local air pollution control.There are two main innovations in this paper.（1）Innovation of empirical method:this paper uses the environmental protection tax reform as a quasi-natural experiment to build a DID model,which can measure the effect of environmental protection tax reform on air pollutants steadily and accurately.（2）Innovation of research perspective.The previous literature mainly focuses on the micro perspective of enterprises,mainly studying the impact of environmental protection tax on enterprise performance,enterprise capacity utilization rate and enterprise green innovation.This paper focuses on the effect of environmental protection tax on air pollution control,and the research results are closely related to people’s quality of life and social welfare.In addition,different from the existing research on"haze pollution"and"air pollution in resource-based cities,"this paper uses the data of 6 air pollutants from 271 prefecture-level cities across the country for research.