缴税还是捐赠?——环境政策效益评估中的支付工具选择

Tax or Donation? Choice of Payment Vehicles in Environmental Policy Evaluation

在环境政策的效益评估中,采用不同的支付工具得到的评估结果往往存在着显著差异,但是,经济学家关于支付工具效应产生的原因尚存在争议。本文首先为支付工具效应的成因提供了一种理论解释,然后,以北京市大气污染治理为例设计了多个随机的实验组,在调查样本的基础上对比分析了"缴税"和"捐赠"两种支付工具的效益评估结果。分析结果证实了支付工具效应的存在,缺乏结果性承诺的实验设计、民众对政策实施主体的信任度差异以及不认同环境治理责任都会引发支付工具效应。从总体上看,"捐赠"支付工具对实验设计因素更加敏感,而"缴税"支付工具对样本认知更加敏感。本文的研究结论意味着研究者和政策制定者在开展环境政策效益评估时需要谨慎地选择支付工具,不同的支付工具在实现其效度时对实验设计和样本的要求存在差异。

Payment vehicle effect ( PVE ) in benefit analysis of environmental policy has been extensively found in empirical studies. However, the reason of PVE still remains controversial. This paper first provides a theoretical explanation of PVE from the perspective of strategic behaviors. Taking Beijing's air pollution control policy as example, this paper designs several random experimental groups, makes a comparative analysis between evaluation results of tax and donation vehicles. The results confirm that inconsequential experimental design , different degree of trust between people and policy implementer, and disidentification of environmental governance responsibility could result in PVE. Generally, donation vehicle is more sensitive to experiment design, while tax vehicle is more sensitive to sample perception. The results imply that when conducting benefit analysis of environmental policies, researchers or policy makers should choose payment vehicle discreetly. Different vehicles require different standards on experimental design and sample to achieve its validity.