环境监测社会化改革挤出“数据水分”了吗?

Does the market tell the truth:the role of third-party organizations in improving environmental monitoring in China

为进一步提高环境监测数据质量,自2015年起中国开始实行环境监测服务的社会化改革,使得长期以来由地方各级环境监测站实施的环境质量监测开始由市场上的环境监测服务机构承担,实现了中国环境治理体系改革中的一次历史性飞跃。然而,目前却鲜有研究实证性地检验环境监测服务社会化改革后中国环境监测数据的质量究竟是否有所提高这一关键问题。文章基于中国338个地级以上城市2013—2020年间的每日环境空气质量监测数据,采用断点回归分析方法,检验了环境监测社会化改革对提高中国环境监测数据质量的政策有效性,并且探析了这一历史性的监测体制改革在中国环境治理模式变迁中的影响与作用。研究结果表明:①环境监测服务社会化改革后,中国环境监测数据的准确性已得到有效提高。②环境监测服务的社会化改革成了嵌入“碎片化”的地方环境政策执行系统的有力整合手段,为原本封闭的中国环境监测体系提供了重要的外部参与及监督反馈机制,这在很大程度上缓解了中央管辖权与地方环境治理权之间的巨大张力,缓和了地方环境治理系统中多元化的利益冲突,缓冲了地方政府对环境数据的行政干预。中央政府通过引入制度化的社会与市场参与方式,采用政府管制与市场机制相结合的模式,使得其自身在环境治理中的威权主义韧性得以进一步增强,这有效校正了地方层面环境政策的执行偏差,明显提高了中国的环境治理绩效。

To promote the accuracy of environmental monitoring data,Chinese central authorities have made concrete efforts to push forward a raft of nationwide environmental monitoring reforms since 2015. The most remarkable one is to involve profit-making thirdparty organizations in collecting environmental data at the local level,deviating from the previous approach in which the central government relied exclusively on self-monitored and self-reported data by local authorities. Despite the significance of third-party environmental monitoring,there have been little substantial and systematic analyses in the literature examining its effectiveness in improving data accuracy and whether and how third-party engagement brings about changes to China’s environmental governance. This study adopted the Regression Discontinuity(RD)design to examine whether data accuracy was improved since the introduction of third-party environmental monitoring,and then analyzed the influence of this reform on China’s environmental governance pattern,by using daily air pollution data from 338 prefecture-level cities over the period 2013–2020. We found that data accuracy was improved since the involvement of third-party environmental monitoring organizations. Third-party environmental monitoring reform reflected a gradual move by the Chinese government towards a mixed mode of environmental governance that balanced the central government’s control of policy direction in policy implementation with local realities. Through strengthening control by reducing the threshold of social and market engagement,the central government uses third-party engagement to gradually break the local monopoly of environmental data collection/processing and to return more power to the central government. By doing so,third-party environmental monitoring has become an effective policy instrument to close the gap in China’s fragmented environmental governance structure by integrating both commandand-control approaches and market-based mechanisms.