Is Public Participation Weak Environmental Regulation? Experience from China’s Environmental Public Interest Litigation Pilots

Mengchan Zhao and Yangyang Cheng ()
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Mengchan Zhao: School of Business, Chizhou University, Chizhou 247100, China
Yangyang Cheng: School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 20, 1-19

Abstract: Previous studies have generally concluded that public participation lacks substantive constraints and has weak environmental regulation effects. Using China’s environmental public interest litigation (EPIL), implemented in 2015, as a quasi-natural experiment to verify the environmental effects of public participation under judicial norms, the difference-in-differences (DID) estimates in this paper show that industrial wastewater and industrial sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) emissions in the treated cities declined by an average of 2.76 million tons and 2.51 kilotons per year, respectively, which ultimately improved the city’s environmental quality. The results of the mechanism also show that the EPIL was able to mobilize all three parties: the public, government and enterprises. In the context of the environment as an externality product, where the interests of all the parties are difficult to coordinate, the EPIL has the advantage of overcoming conflicts of interest. Our study provides a quantitative justification for the environmental impact assessment of public litigation and contributes empirical references to overcome the weak binding defect of public participatory environmental regulation.

Keywords: public participation; environmental public interest litigation; urban industrial pollution; environmental regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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