| Along with the advancement of industrial civilization and the rapid development of economic, there not only brings abundance of material comforts, but also its side product--environmental pollution, which decreases the economic development of the human beings. Pollution not only makes the sustainability of economic growth more and more fragile, and continuously endangers the survival and development of human society. Especially after the 20th century, because of a series of major contaminative events, the environment problem gains more and more attention from people. Consequently, governments and international organizations also take active measures to strengthen environmental regulation.Due to the nature of public goods of the environment and the externalities of environmental behavior, undoubtedly, it is a significant responsibility for governments to govern environmental regulations and to strengthen environmental protection. The effects of environmental regulation from government on the quality of environment have three main aspects as followings:The first one is effects on income distribution of consumers after environmental regulation. With the enhancement of the government’s environmental regulation, some consumer goods which expends more resources and cause more environmental pollution will rise, while the price of those which have less resource consumption and less environmental pollution or even pollution-free product will relatively decline, which will produces a kind of income distribution effects to change people’s consuming patterns from pure material consumption to paying attention to the natural environment and healthy life. It is beneficial to cultivate people’s consuming idea and behavior in a "green" way. The second effect is on adjustment of production structure and technological innovation because of environmental regulation. On the side of buyer’s market, on guiding consumers to "green" consuming process, government’s environmental regulation will indirectly affect producers for "green" production and increase the output of "green" products in order to adjust and optimize the product structure, which is called the effect of adjustment of product structure. In addition, in order to cope with the government’s macro-control policies and the change of market demand, the producer will also speed up the "green" technological innovation. On the one hand, the aim is to decrease the cost because of rising environmental protection tax, and on the other hand, it aims to adapt to the trend of the economic and social development so that producers could possess supreme techniques in the field of environmental protection in the future and lay a good foundation to keep competitive in market, which is called effect of technological innovation. The last effect is self-reinforcing cycle of the government’s environmental regulation The main body of environmental regulation is the government, and the objects of regulation is producers who cause environmental pollution consumers, which is a kind of top-down implementation of policies and measures. As consumers and producers increasingly enhance their awareness of environmental protection, product structure and industrial structure have saved more and more energy and developed more and more environmental. Meanwhile consumer’s consumption patterns and consumption structure also become healthier and more and more environmental so that the whole society will form a kind of environmental protection concept and atmosphere. On this occasion, the requirements from whole society that the government need to strengthen environmental protection are on a rise, which makes further promotion for the government to strengthen environmental regulation. That is to say, the implementation of the government environmental regulation policy, to a certain extent, can help the government to form a benign circulation reinforcement effect of environmental regulation, which amplifies the effects of environmental regulation to promote environmental quality better.The environmental regulation officially of China started in the 1970s, and then gradually became standardized and institutionalized. Environmental regulatory organizations, environmental laws and regulations, as well as the way of environmental regulation get improved and completed gradually, at the same time, the government has increased financial investment in the field of environmental protection. Under the continuous enhancement of government environmental regulation, the standard rate of pollution emission of waste water, waste gas, solid waste and other pollutants has increased year by year, but discharge of per unit of GDP has obviously declined, and the trend of environmental degradation has been curbed apparently. Despite China’s great efforts and great achievements in the process of environmental regulation, there is still large room for improvement. Not only that, in fact, in china, performance of environmental regulation also showed obvious regional differences:from the perspective of environmental regulation performance based on comprehensive index, most of time before 2010, the performance in central and western regions of the environmental regulation is higher than that in the eastern region, but after 2010, the environmental regulation performance in eastern region clearly began to surpass performance in central and western regions and the environmental regulation performance in central area is very similar to that in western regions. From the aspect of performance based on specific indicators of environmental regulation, the unit output value of water pollution, air pollution and solid waste pollution have presented obvious regional distinctions:The highest emission is in the western region, followed by central region, and the eastern region is the lowest. Considering the reality that the level of economic development in China, from west to east, has gradually improved, it shows that the eastern region, to a great extent, has achieved the "win-win" in the field of economic growth and environment, while there is still large room for improvement in central are and western region.To analyze environmental regulation performance, first of all, environmental regulation performance evaluation system needs to be clear. There are three main contents in environmental regulation performance evaluation system:one is to determine the evaluation subjects. Evaluation subjects include external evaluation subject and internal evaluation subject, but the latter should be given priority. The second is to determine evaluation method. Evaluation methods mainly include the economic impact assessment method, cost-benefit evaluation method, data envelopment analysis (DEA), etc. In view of the particularity of environmental regulation, this thesis chooses economic impact assessment method to evaluate environmental regulation performance. The third one is to determine evaluation index. According to the target consistency, completeness, feasibility, comparability, pertinence principle, on the basis of determining multiple decomposition index, multiple targets need to be compounded into a comprehensive index by using principal component analysis (PCA) so as to objectively reflect the real level of environmental regulation performance.On the basis of the previous series of normative analysis and reality, it is necessary to use empirical data for the corresponding empirical research, because the empirical research based on practice are more persuasive than logical reasoning. In view of this, this thesis, based on theory knowledge of public goods theory, externality theory, regulatory capture theory, public choice theory, environmental Kuznets curve, etc., adopts the actual investigation, theoretical research, empirical analysis as well as the method of experiment and demonstration, considers environmental regulation performance as the research object, and uses national panel data of 29 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions from 1995-2014, to make empirical analysis of the regional differences of environmental Kuznets curve, and the regional differences of pollution industry under the influence of environmental regulation, which could reflect and prove the different aspects and various performance of environmental regulation among different areas. Finally, it needs to make empirical analysis on the influential factors of environmental regulation performance and to do robustness test, which could explore influential factors, from the deep analysis, of environmental regulation performance in different areas.Study found that:(1) among the statistical range, the environmental Kuznets curve of three major regions and whole nation is not a strict inverted "U" type, but a "∽" type curve. Relatively, the point of break down type "U" has inflected later in the eastern region, but the EKC is relatively flat; Although the western region has earlier turned in inverted "U", the EKC is relatively steep. (2) The regional differences of pollution-intensive industries under the influence of environmental regulation have mainly two aspects:one is that pollution-intensive industry has a clear division of labor distribution, and the highest pollution industry in eastern, central and western regions are respectively capital and technology-intensive industries, labor-intensive industries and resource-intensive industries. Secondly, pollution-intensive industry occupies a high proportion in the field of economy in China’s eastern, central and western areas, but there is great difference in industry value among these three regions, and even the value in eastern area equals 3 times than central area and 5 times than western region. (3) Among the factors which affect the performance of environmental regulation, the level of economic development has a positive correlation with industrial structure and environmental regulation performance, while the relation among the energy structure, pollution controlling level and the foreign direct investment with environmental regulation performance shows uncertainty, and there exists obvious differences among three areas due to the different and specific circumstances.In order to further optimize and coordinate regional environmental regulation performance, in this thesis, the countermeasures are as follows:from the perspective of the central government, a regional coordination mechanism shall be established, environmental regulation policy of regional difference should be implemented, and the government shall make the reform of local government incentive mode as well as increase the support for technological innovation. In addition, from the perspective of the local government, it should further adjust the industrial structure, optimize energy-resource structure, promote the structure of foreign direct investment, and adopt the experience from other regions and countries. |
