Official’s Assessment Mechanism And Environmental Governance

In China’s development practice,local officials have been playing a very important role.Based on the panel data of 286 prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2014,this paper mainly analyzes the impact of the change in the performance evaluation mechanism of officials on pollution emissions in different cities with different emission standards.At the end of 2005,the central government of China put forward a reform plan for the performance appraisal mechanism of local officials,incorporating environmental protection indicators into the performance appraisal mechanism of local officials.This paper makes an empirical analysis on the impact of the change of official assessment mechanism on the environment under different governance standards,the empirical results show that after the central government adds environmental protection indicators to the performance appraisal of local officials,officials in the emission-strictly-controlled area will be more effective in the management of the environment.On this basis,this paper further adds the impact of the personal characteristics of officials on environmental government.This paper concludes that after the reform of the assessment mechanism of local officials,the officials promoted from local area can better achieve pollution reduction,and this pollution reduction is achieved at the expense of the economy;in addition,young,highly educated local officials have a longer-term vision of development and are more likely to be encouraged by the central government’s performance appraisal reform,hence making more efforts to improve the environment.