媒体压力与空气质量改善

MEDIA PRESSURE AND THE IMPROVEMENT OF AIR QUALITY

本文使用2014—2017年我国省级报纸对省份内地级市的空气污染报道数据,实证检验了媒体压力在促进空气质量改善中的作用。研究发现,媒体对污染报道的增加,显著促进了城市空气质量的改善,且这种改善的效果受污染报道发表报纸是否为省级党委机关报以及城市主政官员特征的影响。这意味着,媒体污染报道主要通过对政府官员形成的压力来促进地方政府进行污染治理、改善空气质量。进一步研究发现,环境治理投入的增加与工业污染排放的减少,是媒体压力促进城市空气质量改善的有效途径。本文的结论,对于理解新时代我国舆论监督的作用机制以及更好发挥新闻媒体监督在环境治理中的作用,提供了新的视角。

Using province-level newspapers’air pollution reports about prefecture-level cities within the province from 2014 to 2017,this paper provides empirical evidences that media pressure can promote air quality.Our paper finds that the increase of air pollution reports significantly promotes air quality.Moreover,the magnitude of those effects are highly correlated with the type of newspaper(Party or Non-party newspaper)and the personal characteristics of the cities chief officials(ages and terms of offices).This suggests that air pollution reports mainly promote local governments’effort on curbing air pollution.Further study shows that the increase of environmental governance investment and the reduction of industrial pollution emission are effective ways for media pressure to promote the improvement of air quality.This paper provides a new perspective for understanding the mechanism of public opinion supervision in the new era,and better playing roles of media supervision in environmental governance.