| Since the reform and opening up in 1978,China’s economic construction has achieved historic achievements that are rarely seen in the world.According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics,China’s GDP will exceed 100 trillion yuan for the first time in 2020,ranking second in the world.However,the rapid economic growth has also brought serious environmental pollution,low resource utilization efficiency,and ecosystem imbalances,which have seriously affected the quality of life of people.Although the 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasized the requirement to vigorously promote the construction of ecological civilization,the environmental quality has indeed improved in recent years.However,according to the China Environmental Status Bulletin released in 2019,the number of heavily polluted days in China’s 337 prefecture-level cities increased by 88 days compared with 2018.The 14 th Five-Year Plan also pointed out that China still faces domestic challenges with a long way to go in terms of ecological and environmental protection.In conclusion,under the attention of the central government,although the situation facing China’s ecological environment has improved in recent years,it is still not optimistic.The special nature of the regional ecological environment as a non-economic public goods determines that the government is the core force to ensure its supply.As far as China is concerned,under the fiscal decentralization system with unique Chinese style,the behavior of local governments plays a significant role in environmental quality.Therefore,in-depth analysis of the specific impact mechanism of local government behavior on the quality of regional ecological environment under the decentralization system is indispensable.Under the goal of promoting high-quality economic development,this paper is committed to taking the transformation of local government behavior under fiscal decentralization as an opportunity to explore the focus of improving the quality of regional ecological environment,in order to find feasible ways to further improve the quality of regional ecological environment and promote the green and sustainable development of the economy.In view of this,this paper firstly analyzes the theoretical mechanism of fiscal decentralization and local government behavior affecting the regional ecological environment.Secondly,based on China’s provincial panel data from 2003 to 2019 as a sample,this paper constructs a dynamic panel econometric model and uses the two-step system generalized moment estimation method for empirical research.The research results are as follows.From the perspective of direct effect,fiscal decentralization is not conducive to the improvement of regional ecological environment quality as a whole.From the perspective of indirect effect,fiscal decentralization leads to local government investment behavior preference and income behavior preference,which will indirectly have an impact on the quality of regional ecological environment.From the perspective of regional heterogeneity based on the level of economic development,the negative effect of fiscal decentralization on the quality of the regional ecological environment may be reversed into a positive effect in the eastern region.However,fiscal decentralization in the central and western regions still has a negative effect on the quality of regional ecological environment.Finally,this paper puts forward practical countermeasures to give full play to the positive effect of fiscal decentralization on the regional ecological environment. |
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