运动式治理降低环境信息公开质量?——实证依据与理论解释

Does Campaign-style Enforcement Reduce the Quality of Environmental Information Disclosures?——Empirical Evidence and a Theoretical Explanation

环境信息公开是政府与社会对企业环境行为进行监管的重要信息型政策工具,中央环保督察亦被视为环境监管的运动式治理手段,而目前关注中央环保督察作用于企业环境信息公开表现的实证研究尚不充分。本文运用双重差分方法,评估了自2016年至2017年中央环保督察对国家重点排污企业环境信息公开质量的影响,发现被督察地区的企业环境信息公开质量显著下降。本文结果说明了运动式治理与自愿性、模糊性和长期性信息型政策工具错配,不利于建立环境监管的长效治理机制。研究结论对运动式治理和政策执行理论做出了补充。

The disclosure of environmental information(EID)is a significant approach that governments employ to regulate environmental activities by firms.To improve corporate EIDs,the Chinese government has adopted a series of guiding policies and recommended standards.Some large polluters are required to disclose their environmental information on the official online platform,the State Key Monitored Polluting Enterprises(SKMPE).In 2013,this policy was enacted by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment as the Self-monitoring and Information Disclosure of State Key Monitored Polluting Enterprises regulation,and it has been enforced by local governments since 2014.However,local governments have discretion to decide the lists of SKMPEs.Furthermore,there are many ambiguities and uncertainties in the policy,leading to greenwashing by firms and low-quality EIDs.Responding to the failure of the information instrument,since 2016 the Chinese central government has conducted massive central environmental inspections(CEIs),a kind of campaign-style enforcement with clear policy goals and mandatory implementation requirements.CEIs are identified as an effective governance tool for environmental regulation of local governments and firms,but there is limited empirical evidence regarding their effectiveness.Drawing on data derived from the nationwide information disclosure websites of key state-monitored polluting enterprises in each province and indepth interviews with local officials and managers,this article uses a difference-indifference approach to estimate the impact of CEIs from 2016 to 2017 on the quality of environmental information disclosures by regulated SKMPEs in China.The findings indicate that central environmental inspections significantly triggered a greenwashing of EIDs by firms,which means that firms subject to CEIs produced lower-quality information disclosures than other SKMPEs.The empirical results show the impact of campaign-style enforcement on the performance of firm environmental disclosures,illustrating that campaign-style enforcement cannot improve the effectiveness of an environmental information policy.Rather,it amplifies the negative policy effects due to the high ambiguities and mismatches of the long-term information-based policy tools.Our study contributes to both the theory of campaign-style enforcement and policy implementation of environmental regulation.