Does China’s Eco-Province Policy Effectively Reduce the Pollutant Emission Intensities?

Mingfang Tang, Ling Li, Tao Li, Yuejing Rong and Hongbing Deng ()
Additional contact information
Mingfang Tang: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
Ling Li: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
Tao Li: Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
Yuejing Rong: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
Hongbing Deng: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 17, 1-19

Abstract: Economic development and environmental conservation are two important challenges for China. A series of initiatives including Eco-province (EP) policies have been taken to achieve sustainable development by the Chinese government. Increasing concerns regarding policy implications on sustainable development have increased attention to the topic. However, the research on the relationship between economic development and pollutant (COD, SO 2 ) emission intensities after the implementation of EP policy remains inadequate. We applied a Time-Varying Difference-in-Differences Model by employing Chinese provincial panel data to quantitatively study the policy effect, and further utilized the Mediating Effect Model to analyze the mechanism. The article generates several findings: (1) The EP policy had overall inhibitory effects on both COD and SO 2 emission intensities, and it would reduce the emission intensity by 4.99% and 6.77% on average, respectively. However, there was a five year lag in the policy effect. (2) The policy effect was significant in the western and central provinces with high pollutant emission intensities, but not in the eastern provinces. (3) The primary inhibiting mediating effects of Eco-province policy to lower pollutant emission intensity were increased GDP per capita and inventions.

Keywords: Eco-province; policy effect; pollutant emission intensity; time-varying difference-in-differences model; mediating effect model; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/17/11025/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/17/11025/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:17:p:11025-:d:905795

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().