Study On The Influence Of Environmental Regulation On Urban Smog Pollution

In the past 40 years of reform and opening up,the economy of China has achieved rapid development.However,it also inevitably leads to increased pollution emissions and ecological damage.Unfortunately,the problem of atmospheric pollution between Chinese cities has become increasingly serious in recent years.At present,wide range and frequent occurrence of extreme smog pollution has risen to an unprecedented situation.Under the dome,the smog is raging.Thus,how to solve the dilemma of "the Smog encircling the city" is the proper meaning of the new era to vigorously promote the construction of ecological civilization and high-quality economic development.Because of the characteristics of negative externalities,unclear property rights,and public goods,it is difficult to effectively adjust smog pollution by the “invisible hand” of the market mechanism.Therefore,it is imperative that the government’s “visible hand” intervene through mandatory environmental regulations.Hence,what is the impact of environmental regulation on smog pollution? Do these effects show consistency or heterogeneity in different spaces? How to properly formulate and implement effective environmental regulation policies? In view of this,starting from the Chinese urban level,this paper explored the dynamic evolutionary trends and impact mechanisms of formal and informal environmental regulation and smog pollution,and built a spatial econometric model to conduct empirical tests,in order to accelerate the formulation of environmental regulation policy and improve the effectiveness of smog management.This is of great benefit to reversing the current situation of smog pollution in China’s cities and improving the quality of the atmospheric environment.Meanwhile,it has important practical significance for promoting China’s new urbanization,driving the sustained and healthy development of the urban economy,and further guiding local government officials to establish a correct view of political achievements.On the basis of systematically combing the literature on environmental regulation and smog pollution,this paper initially sorts out the policies and events of formal and informal environmental regulations and smog pollution in Chinese cities and measures it,and then examined their dynamic evolution trend and the correlation between the two.Secondly,based on the investigations of the influencing factors of smog pollution between cities,the paper analyzed the impact mechanism of formal and informal environmental regulation on smog pollution,especially the spatial impact of environmental regulation on smog pollution among cities.And by introducing environmental regulations and smog pollution into the same analysis framework,a new economic geography model is constructed to explore the impact of environmental regulations on urban smog pollution.Then,the exploratory spatial data analysis(ESDA)method was used to further investigate the spatial autocorrelation between environmental regulation and smog pollution,and the spatial Durbin model was constructed to empirically test the impact of formal and informal environmental regulations on smogpollution.Finally,summarized the theoretical and empirical conclusions,and based on this,put forward practical and feasible suggestions for environmental regulation policies and smog pollution control.The results of this paper show that,from the dynamic evolution trend,formal and informal environmental regulations are showing a slow growth trend,and smog pollution shows a "M" type twisting downward trend.Moreover,the smog pollution decreases with the increase of the intensity of formal environmental regulation,and tends to increase and then decrease along with the increase of the intensity of informal environmental regulation.From the theoretical mechanism research,although the specific mechanisms of formal and informal environmental regulations affecting smog pollution are not the same,they all affect smog pollution through direct and indirect effects.At the same time,formal environmental regulation at the spatial level affects urban smog pollution through some mechanisms such as free-riding,bottom-by-bottom competition,and regional joint prevention and control,while informal environmental regulation affects urban smog pollution by means of demonstration effects,experience exchanges and joint actions.And theoretical model analysis shows that both formal and informal environmental regulations can suppress smog pollution to a certain extent.It mainly affects corporate production decisions by increasing corporate costs,and thus achieves the goal of reducing smog pollution.From the empirical model analysis,there is significant spatial dependence and spatial spillover effect of smog pollution among cities,showing “local club” phenomenon.Moreover,the distribution of smog pollution has a certain spatial correlation with formal environmental regulations and informal environmental regulations,and both formal and informal environmental regulations are conducive to smog management in the region and neighboring cities.Based on this,three suggestions are proposed.One is to highlight the leading role of formal environmental regulation in the management of haze.The other is to play an auxiliary role of informal environmental regulation in the management of haze.Lastly,accelerate the establishment of a regional joint prevention and control system for smog management in China.