雾霾污染区域协同治理的“逐底竞争”检验

"Race to the bottom" test of collaborative management in haze pollution area

地方政府在雾霾污染区域协同治理过程中的行为选择对雾霾污染治理效果发挥着重要作用。本文将环境规制的"逐底竞争"理论拓展到雾霾污染区域协同治理中,理论分析不同政绩考核情形下地方政府在雾霾污染区域协同治理中的行为变化,并利用2000—2016年中国省际面板数据,构建两区制空间Durbin模型对中国雾霾污染区域协同治理中的"逐底竞争"行为进行实证检验。研究结果表明:中国各地方政府在参与雾霾污染区域协同治理中的确存在"逐底竞争"特征。当政绩考核以经济利益为主要标准时,地方政府为了在晋升锦标赛中占据优势地位,会竞相放松雾霾污染治理力度,出现"逐底竞争",尽管中央已经将环境质量纳入地方政府的政绩考核体系,但"逐底竞争"现象依然存在。稳健性检验结果表明,本文的研究结论是稳健的。

The local government’s choice in the process of regional collaborative governance of haze pollution plays an important role in haze pollution governance and even environmental governance effect. There are many studies on the competition of environmental regulation by local governments. However, the existing research on the regional strategic interaction of haze pollution governance in China has not been involved. This study extends the"race to the bottom"theory of environmental regulation to regional collaborative governance of haze pollution. From the theoretical analysis, it derives the change of local government’s behavior in the regional collaborative governance of haze pollution under the situation of different performance evaluation system. The provincial data from 2000 to 2016 in China were used to build a two-regime spatial durbin model to empirically test the"race to the bottom"in the collaborative governance of haze pollution areas in China. The results show that the local governments have the characteristics of"race to the bottom" in the regional collaborative governance of haze pollution. When the performance evaluation standard is of economic benefits, local governments will compete to relax the haze pollution governance and appear"race to the bottom"in order to take advantage of the promotion championship. With the central government taking environmental quality into the performance evaluation system, the phenomenon of"race to the bottom"has weakened. However,the existence of haze pollution spillover effects will also lead to the tendency of local governments to tackle free rides and there is still"race to the bottom". The results of robustness test show that the conclusion of this study is robust. Therefore, in order to curb the occurrence of"race to bottom",the central authority should be strengthened, various systems and mechanisms should be improved,and a joint effort should be formed in the process of collaborative governance of haze pollution.