环境司法对居民健康水平的影响——基于相关环境裁判文书的文本分析

Impact of environmental justice on residents'health:a textual analysis based on environmental justice judgments

环境污染问题对居民健康水平的影响受到越来越多的关注。在环境司法积极发挥生态环境保护效应的当下,科学评价环境司法对居民健康水平的影响效应和作用机制,具有重要意义。该研究基于中国司法大数据研究院公开的2012—2017年全国各地法院的环境裁判文书,采用机器学习的方法对案件数量、判罚金额、被告人数等数据要素进行文本识别以构建环境司法度量指标,并匹配“中国综合社会调查”等数据,实证检验了环境司法对居民健康水平的影响。研究结果表明:(1)环境司法对居民健康水平存在显著的正向影响,提高环境司法水平可以显著提升居民健康水平。且其作用在环境司法实施的二年内持续效应皆十分显著,这一研究结论在进行多种稳健性检验后仍然成立。(2)环境司法案件类型对居民健康水平的影响具有异质性,不同案件类别对居民健康水平的影响程度不同:刑事案件由于对社会造成的危害程度较大,其对应的司法处理震慑作用较强,因此对居民健康水平提升作用也更明显,而民事案件所带来的提升效果并不显著;环境司法的强度对居民健康水平的影响也具有异质性,当案件数量大于均值或判罚金额大于1万元或被告人数大于均值时,环境司法才能对居民健康水平产生显著的提升效应。(3)机制分析发现,环境司法能够通过降低地区污染物排放、提高居民家庭收入两个方面提升地区居民健康水平。(4)成本效益分析发现,环境司法可以显著减少地区医疗卫生支出和居民诊疗人次,降低公共卫生支出成本。该研究从理论和实证双重视角检验了环境司法对中国居民健康的影响效应,对深化生态环境司法治理、保障人民群众健康具有重要价值。

The impact of environmental pollution issues on residents′health is a matter of great concern.At a time when environmen-tal justice activism appeals to the active role of environmental protection,it is of great practical significance to scientifically evaluate the effects and mechanisms of environmental justice on residents′health.Based on the environmental trial cases published by the Chi-na Justice Big Data Academy from 2012 to 2017 across China,this study adopted the machine learning method to identify the number of cases,the amount of penalties,the number of defendants,and other data elements to construct the environmental justice index,which was then matched with data from the China General Social Survey,empirically evaluating the impact of environmental justice on resi-dents′health.The results showed that:①Environmental justice had a positive and significant effect on residents′health.Its significant effect persisted for 2 years.This conclusion still held after a variety of robustness tests.②The effect of the type of environmental jus-tice cases on residents′health was heterogeneous.Different types of cases had different degrees of impact on residents′health:Criminal cases had a stronger deterrent effect due to the greater harm they caused to society and therefore had a more pronounced effect on the health of the population.Comparatively,the effect of civil cases on the residents′health was not significant.The penalties of environ-mental justice also had a heterogeneous effect on residents’health.Environmental justice only had a significant effect when the amount of the judgment exceeded 10,000 yuan and the number of cases was greater than the mean.③Mechanism analysis showed that regional residents′health could be enhanced by environmental justice when regional pollutant emissions were limited and residents′household incomes increased.④The cost-benefit analysis found that environmental justice could greatly reduce the cost of public health expendi-tures,including regional health care expenses and the number of consultations.This study examines the impact of environmental justice on the health of Chinese residents from both theoretical and empirical perspectives,which is of great significance for deepening the judi-cial governance of the ecological environment and safeguarding people′s health.