Environmental Decentralization?environmental Regulation And Agricultural Non-point Source Pollution

As a breakthrough in agricultural green development,agricultural non-point source pollution control has become an important issue in the field of agricultural green development.Finding ways to reduce agricultural non-point source pollution has always been the focus of academic and political circles.The theory of environmental federalism points out that improving the local government's environmental management power is conducive to local policy,improving the effectiveness and pertinence of environmental pollution control.For this reason,China's environmental affairs management power is gradually tilted towards local governments,and local participation is encouraged to participate in environmental pollution control.So,has environmental decentralization played a role in reducing agricultural non-point source pollution? With the gradual deepening of the reform of the environmental decentralization system,local governments have greater discretion in the field of environmental pollution control.Under the dual role of economic incentives and promotion incentives,as the main body for implementing and enforcing environmental regulations,local governments are more inclined to sacrifice non-economic functional goals to achieve short-term economic benefits,thereby distorting the quality of local government environmental public service supply and affecting agricultural non-point sources Pollution control performance.The next question is: how does environmental decentralization affect environmental regulation? What role does environmental regulation play between environmental decentralization and agricultural non-point source pollution? The answer to the above questions is helpful to re-examine the plight of agricultural non-point source pollution prevention from the system level,which has important theoretical and practical significance for optimizing the allocation of environmental management power and responsibilities,improving the provision of environmental public services,and achieving high-quality agricultural and rural development.This article follows the logic of "question raising ? theoretical research ? empirical research ? policy research".Firstly,the core concepts of this article are defined on the basis of fully referring to relevant classic theories,and the mechanism of environmental decentralization on agricultural non-point source pollution and environmental regulations is revealed.The "environmental decentralization ? environmental regulation" is analyzed.? Agricultural non-point source pollution ",a logical chain for constructing a theoretical analysis framework for later empirical research.Secondly,based on the analysis of the status quo and characteristics of China's environmental decentralization,environmental regulation,and agricultural non-point source pollution,the generalized moment estimation and panel threshold regression models were used to investigate the impact of environmental decentralization on non-point source pollution in agriculture.Then use the space lag model to empirically test the impact of environmental decentralization on environmental regulation,and use the two-zone asymmetric model to identify the forms of environmental regulation competition among local governments.Third,use the mediation effect model to empirically test the environmental regulation in the environment.The intermediary role between decentralization and agricultural non-point source pollution.Finally,based on the research conclusions and in combination with China's current national conditions,policy recommendations centered on "optimizing the decentralized management system for environmental affairs" are put forward.The main research conclusions of this article are as follows:Firstly,Theoretical research shows that environmental decentralization can not only directly affect agricultural non-point source pollution,but also an indirect action path of "environmental decentralization-environmental regulation-agricultural non-point source pollution"In terms of direct effects,environmental decentralization enables local governments to have greater discretionary power,forming a city bias for pollution control,and directly acting on agricultural non-point source pollution through pollution transfer,non-agricultural employment,and market segmentation,which decentralizes the environment.The effect of reducing agricultural non-point source pollution has not yet appeared.In terms of indirect effects,the result of environmental decentralization is indirectly causing local governments to use environmental management power at the expense of the environment in exchange for short-term economic growth and reduce the intensity of environmental regulations.The distortion of the incentive mechanism and the lack of binding power of the central government will also cause local governments to carry out competitive downward strategic interactions on basic environmental public services.Taking a closer look,environmental decentralization has led to the adverse selection of local governments' environmental regulations.By addressing the weakness of the “quality” of input-type environmental regulations and the lack of “encourages” of economic incentives,it has further led to the prevention of agricultural non-point source pollution..Secondly,China 's inter-provincial agricultural non-point source pollution emission intensity shows a rising trend,but the regional differences are significant and show strong spatial correlation characteristicsThe inventory analysis method was used to measure the emission intensity of agricultural non-point source pollution in China's provinces from 2004 to 2017.The results showed that the intensity of agricultural non-point source pollution emission in China showed a periodical characteristic of first decline and then increase.Among them,COD is the main source of agricultural non-point source pollution.From the perspective of spatial distribution,the high values are mainly concentrated in eastern and central China.The results of regional differences in agricultural non-point source pollution emission intensity measured by the Gini coefficient show that there are obvious regional differences in agricultural non-point source pollution emission intensity,the regional differences are shrinking,and the western regions have the largest differences.Regional differences show a trend of differentiation,with the smallest differences between East and Central regions,and the regional differences mainly come from interregional differences.The analysis results using the local spatial autocorrelation index show that the agricultural non-point source pollution emission intensity in various provinces tends to form agglomeration in space,that is,the provinces with higher agricultural non-point source pollution emission intensity and lower aggregate concentration occur.Thirdly,The impact of environmental decentralization on agricultural non-point source pollution appears as a "grabbing hand",and there is a significant threshold effect between the two.Excessive environmental decentralization will worsen agricultural non-point source pollutionThis paper empirically examines the impact of environmental decentralization on agricultural non-point source pollution through a dynamic panel model.It was found that environmental decentralization significantly increased agricultural non-point source pollution,indicating that the decentralized agricultural non-point source pollution reduction effect was not effectively exerted.From the perspective of heterogeneous environmental decentralization,environmental administrative decentralization has played a role in reducing agricultural non-point source pollution,while environmental monitoring decentralization and environmental monitoring decentralization have the opposite effect.From the perspective of regional differences,environmental decentralization affects agricultural non-source sources.The impact of pollution is shown as a "helping hand" in the eastern region and as a "grabbing hand" in the western region,but not significantly in the central region.In addition,the empirical results of the panel threshold model show that the impact of environmental decentralization on agricultural non-point source pollution has threshold characteristics.When the degree of environmental decentralization exceeds a certain threshold value(environmental decentralization degree is higher than 0.8779),environmental regulation will affect agricultural non-point source.The role of pollution reduction has changed from a helping hand to a grabbing hand.At the same time,this threshold characteristic exists when the environmental administrative decentralization,environmental monitoring and environmental monitoring decentralization are used as threshold variables,among which the environmental monitoring decentralization is particularly significant.Fourthly,Environmental decentralization has a significant negative impact on the intensity of environmental regulations,and the reason is that the regional environmental regulations have the characteristics of "bottom-to-bottom competition"By examining the relationship between environmental decentralization and environmental regulation,it is found that the higher the degree of environmental decentralization,the lower the intensity of environmental regulation.From the perspective of heterogeneous environmental decentralization,the deterrence of environmental decentralization and environmental monitoring is more significant,while environmental administrative decentralization is not significant;from the perspective of regional heterogeneity,environmental decentralization The impact on the intensity of environmental regulation is positive in the eastern region,negative in the western region,and insignificant in the central region.Local governments have obvious camera-choice characteristics in terms of environmental regulation,that is,they adopt the same direction change in accordance with changes in the intensity of environmental regulations in neighboring provinces.They tend to adopt "imitation"-type regulatory strategies,govern investment-type environmental regulations,and economically-incentive environments.Regulations all show the same competitive strategy.When local governments formulate environmental regulations,they will make more reference to changes in the intensity of environmental regulations in neighboring provinces that were originally weaker than themselves,forming a competition form of "bottom-to-bottom competition." Among them,the situation of “rule-to-bottom competition” in the governance of investment-oriented environmental regulations is particularly serious.Fifthly,Environmental regulation has a mediating role between environmental decentralization and agricultural non-point source pollution.Environmental decentralization will affect agricultural non-point source pollution through environmental regulation.This paper incorporates environmental decentralization,environmental regulation,and agricultural non-point source pollution into a unified analytical framework,and constructs an intermediary effect test model of "environmental decentralization ? environmental regulation ? agricultural non-point source pollution",using China's 2004-2017 provincial Panel data empirically examine the mediating effects of environmental regulation between environmental decentralization and agricultural non-point source pollution.The results show that:(1)In general,environmental regulation is an intermediary variable in which environmental decentralization affects agricultural non-point source pollution,and environmental decentralization affects agricultural non-point source pollution in the form of a partial mediation effect;(2)The mediation effect of environmental regulation in different types of environmental analysis There are differences in power.The mediating role of environmental regulation between environmental decentralization and agricultural non-point source pollution is more prominent in environmental decentralization and environmental monitoring decentralization,while environmental administrative decentralization is not significant;From the perspective of heterogeneity,the mediating role of environmental regulation between environmental decentralization and agricultural non-point source pollution is more significant in the eastern and western regions.(4)Further research from the perspective of heterogeneous environmental regulation reveals that the governance investment type Environmental regulation plays a full mediating effect between environmental decentralization and agricultural non-point source pollution,and this mediating effect is mainly reflected in environmental monitoring decentralization and environmental monitoring decentralization;economicX incentive-type environmental regulation appears as a partial mediating effect And this intermediary effect is more reflected in environmental administrative decentralization.The possible innovations of this article are mainly reflected in the following aspects:(1)Expanded the research perspective of mitigating agricultural non-point source pollution,established an analytical framework for the mechanism of environmental decentralization affecting agricultural non-point source pollution,and empirically tested the effect of environmental decentralization on agricultural non-point source pollutionThe factors influencing agricultural non-point source pollution are intricate and complex.From the present point of view,the factors affecting the agricultural non-point source pollution in academia are mainly concentrated in the application intensity of chemical fertilizers and pesticides,the level of regional economic development,and the agricultural industrial structure.These studies have analyzed the factors affecting agricultural non-point source pollution from the perspective of external economic factors.However,the impact of external economic factors on agricultural non-point source pollution cannot be independent of internal institutional factors.When the performance appraisal mechanism emphasizes economic indicators and ignores the rigid requirements of the agricultural environment,local governments cover agricultural non-point source pollution and even race to lower the regulatory threshold for economic indicators,resulting in environmental regulatory competition that is not conducive to preventing and controlling agricultural non-point source pollution.In view of this,this article focuses on the impact of environmental decentralization on agricultural non-point source pollution,and gives an institutional explanation for the predicament of agricultural non-point source pollution prevention.(2)Enriched the theoretical explanation of changes in local government's environmental regulation behavior,incorporated environmental decentralization and environmental regulation into the same analytical framework,and revealed the mechanism and effect of environmental decentralization on local government's environmental regulation.Most of the existing literature has looked at the environmental regulation of local governments from the perspective of fiscal decentralization.In fact,fiscal decentralization mainly outlines the division of economic rights between the central and local governments.The particularity of environmental protection affairs determines that it is necessary to start from the environmental public management system and analyze the environmental regulatory behavior according to the logic of the environmental management power division among governments.Although some scholars have focused their research on the relationship between environmental decentralization and environmental regulation(Qi Yu et al.,2014;Zhang Hua et al.,2017;Li Guoxiang and Zhang Wei,2019),there is a lack of theoretical interpretation of environmental analysis.Study on the Internal Mechanism of the Influence of Rights on Environmental Regulations.Based on the background of environmental decentralization,this paper explores its mechanism of environmental regulation.(3)Reveals the conduction path of environmental decentralization affecting agricultural non-point source pollution,and tests the mediating effect of environmental regulation in the relationship between the two,providing a scientific path decision for mitigating agricultural non-point source pollution.As the price mechanism cannot reflect environmental externalities,market failures have become the norm for preventing and controlling agricultural non-point source pollution,and environmental regulations are an important means to resolve market failures.So how exactly does environmental decentralization affect agricultural non-point source pollution through environmental regulations? What are the effects of different types of environmental regulations? To this end,this paper incorporates environmental decentralization,environmental regulation,and agricultural non-point source pollution into a unified analysis framework,and then expands the research logic into a sequence chain of “environmental decentralization ? environmental regulation ? agricultural non-point source pollution”,using an empirical test of the mediation effect model.The mediating effect of environmental regulation between environmental decentralization and agricultural non-point source pollution is provided,and a scientific path choice is provided for mitigating agricultural non-point source pollution.