Environmental Friendship Index And Its Adjustment Mechanisms

How to evaluate the degree of environmental-friendly and improve its status through policy intervention are hot topics in China. This paper puts forward the conception of environmental friendship index (EFI) and its evaluative method. Based on the results of EFI, the author constructs a comprehensive adjustment mechanism which contains the dimensions of industry preference, environmental policy instruments and the main bodies of environmental protection.The main viewpoints of the paper are shown as follows:(1) Based on the "pressure-status-response" model, the dimensions of EFI are divided into the environmental indirect pressure, environmental direct pressure and the force of pollution treatment. In the three-dimensional geometric model, the degree of EFI is measured through the distance away from the optimal acme. The empirical results show that the degree of EFI of the Central China is lag behind that of the East China. Besides, there is a long distance for Central China to reach the optimal status. Thus, it's necessary to adjust the result through policy interventions.(2) Web searching and content analysis method were used to discover the preference of development strategy and industry preference of the Central China, which concludes 81 cities and 482 counties. The searched information mainly involves the 11th five-year plan, annual public report, political leaders'speech and the official news reports. The results show that industrialization strategy has become the foremost choice of the local governments. Too much of the policy priorities have been paid to the development of the pollution intensive industries. The author argues that the fast speed of industrialization and the unreasonable development of pollution intensive industries may bring an environmental disaster to this region.(3) Environmental regulations and policy tools play key roles in pollution control. This paper uses the inter-provincial panel data of the six provinces of the Central China to check the correlation between environmental policy instruments and five common pollutants. These pollutants include the chemical oxygen demand, ammonia, sulfur dioxide, soot and industrial dust. The results show that compared with administrative enforcement, economic incentives play a more dominant role in pollution control. The effect of voluntary regulation effect is notable, information disclosure has a positive role in air pollution control, while the role of public participation is not yet apparent.(4) Systems thinking analysis and policy networks approach are two similar methods in public policy analysis. This paper constructs a policy networks diagram of pollution related stakeholders to identify the role of different stakeholders and their interactions. Then, through the approach of causal loop diagram, the paper reveals the dynamic causal process between different system variables. Combined with the results, a comprehensive policy mechanism for pollution control is established. The core of the mechanism lies in its effective mobilization of different stakeholders and its wide use of different policy instruments.The study has made some innovation in the following areas:(1) The environmental friendly index are defined and measured through the spacial distance. This is different from the former studies, which measured the degree of sustainability mainly from indicators or models.(2) Policy documents and news reports are efficient tools for showing government's references. It's a time consuming process to obain such kinds of information in a large area of local governments. The author has made some contribution to understand the development strategy and industry preference of the local governments of the Central China.(3) Different policy instruments should be applied in pollution control according to the characteristic of different pollutants. However, the exsiting studies have paid much emphasis to the mandatory instruments, neglecting the non-mandatory instruments. This author tries to make up for the research gap.(4) The roles of main bodies for environmental protection such as governments, enterprises, non-governmental organizations, media and the public should be clarified. The author establishes a new mode of environmental protection, which is called "good governance for environmental protection", to wholly understand the interconnection between these bodies.