The Impact Of Governmental Inspection On Local Environmental Law And Its Real Effects

Building an ecological civilization is of fundamental importance for the sustainable development of the Chinese nation.As a landmark ecological civilization reform measure,on behalf of the central government of China,the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the State Council have initiated the Central Inspection of Environmental Protection(CIEP).It is considered to be the highest profile and the largest scale inspection on environment protection to date,aiming to promote the long-term mechanism of environmental protection including the construction of local environmental rule of law,through the responsibility transmission of “inspecting government” and “inspecting the Party”.Based on this background,it is urgent for government departments and practical circles to systematically evaluate the implementation effect of CIEP.At the same time,limited by data and methods,the academic circle has not a thorough and comprehensive understanding of how CIEP affects the environmental rule of law and its economic consequences,resulting in a lack of understanding of the operation mechanism of CIEP.First,this dissertation systematically reviews relevant research literature from aspects of “subject responsibility and interest game in environmental governance”,“connotation and implementation effect of inspection system”,“importance and influencing factors of environmental rule of law”,and “economic effect of environmental regulation”.Then,from the perspectives of institutional economics,the central and local governments game relationship,and law and economics,it summarizes and integrates existing theories related to environmental governance,and provides a theoretical analysis framework for understanding the transmission and implementation effect of environmental regulation.Furthermore,in the analysis of the institutional background,this dissertation focuses on the background,characteristics and relevant measures of the implementation of CIEP,and reveals that CIEP has the characteristics of high level,strong authority and externality,which provides a basis for the empirical discussion in the following part.On this basis,the dissertation adopting a year-by-year progressive difference-in-difference(DID)empirical specification based on the split-layer distribution of times of various provinces inspected by CIEP,carries out empirical research from two progressive perspectives,namely,“the impact of CIEP on local environmental rule of law and the heterogeneity”,and “the economic consequences of strengthening local environmental rule of law caused by CIEP”.For the first perspective,based on manual collection and sorting of the number of environmental protection laws and regulations issued by various provinces and the number of environmental violations,this dissertation investigated the impact of CIEP on the construction of local environmental rule of law.The results show that,compared with the areas without central inspection,CIEP not only contributed to the increase of the number of environmental protection legislation and the improvement of the quality of legislation,but also increased the number of environmental illegal cases investigated and dealt with in the locality.From the perspective of the issuance of local environmental protection regulations,CIEP contributed to more local environmental legislations(include local regulations,local government rules and normative documents),besides,after being pressured by CIEP,local governments were more inclined to introduce more powerful and stringent environmental protection regulations;further research shows that,in areas with weak legal basis of environmental protection and high degree of environmental pollution,CIEP can play a greater role in promoting the construction of environmental protection legal system.From the perspective of local environmental illegal cases,the legal system construction caused by CIEP has begun to produce the effect of judicial punishment,and CIEP has promoted the investigation and handling of environmental criminal and administrative cases in inspected areas.In particular,there was a significant increase in the number of violations of the newly introduced local environmental protection legislation in inspected areas compared to areas without inspection.Further research shows that,in areas with higher judicial efficiency and higher environmental pollution level,the judicial sanction effect of CIEP on environmental violations is more significant.For the second perspective,based on micro-data such as environmental protection expenditure of listed companies and macro-data such as economic growth and environmental quality of prefecture-level cities,this dissertation empirically examines the“pollution control and emission reduction” effect produced by the Central Inspection of Environmental Protection and the economic consequences.The empirical results show that CIEP has promoted a significant increase of enterprise environmental protection investment by strengthening local environmental rule of law,which further influences the regional environmental quality and economic growth.On the one hand,the empirical results from the perspective of corporate environmental behavior show that,CIEP can exert significant influence on enterprises’ environmental decision-making,and by strengthening local environmental rule of law,a long-term mechanism can be formed to deter pollution violations,thus promoting the significant increase of enterprise environmental protection investment.In addition,with the improvement of enterprises’ environmental behavior,CIEP has promoted the reduction of pollutant emission,which is conducive to the formation of greener and cleaner production methods.However,as enterprises pay more compliance costs under stricter environmental constraints,CIEP has a certain negative impact on business activities and profitability.On the other hand,the empirical results from the perspective of environmental quality and economic growth in prefecture-level cities show that,although CIEP has effectively improved the urban environmental quality measured by air pollutants,it failed to improve the local economic performance so as to realize the “win-win” result of environmental protection and economic development through strict environmental regulations.This also leads us to think further about how to compensate for the additional costs caused by increased regulations,so as to promote the goal of green economic development.Finally,on the basis of the core research conclusions of this dissertation,it puts forward relevant policy suggestions,as well as the deficiencies and future directions of this research.This dissertation clearly identifies the transmission mechanism of“implementation of Central Inspection of Environmental Protection→ enhancement of local environmental rule of law → improvement of enterprise environmental protection behavior → local environmental and economic effects”.It not only systematically evaluates the regulation effect and implementation effect of CIEP,but also helps to clarify the operating mechanism of environmental regulation by “inspecting government”,and has enlightenment significance for further perfecting the long-term mechanism of ecological civilization,so as to realize the coordinated development of environmental quality improvement and economic benefit improvement.