Under Local Government Competition-The Research On Environment Regulation To Eco-efficiency

The high speed development of economy aggravates environmental problems. It has been confirmed by the historical experience of different countries. In recent years, C hina as one of the countries with the fastest economic growth, in the first decade of the 21 st century, has developed to the world’s second largest economy, and also is facing environmental challenges. To comprehensively implement the scientific development concept and ecological civilization construction, and insist on sustainable development, we must pay attention to the coordinated development of economic growth and the environment.From the perspective of local government competition, in order to test the form of environmental regulation competition and its influence on regional eco-efficiency, also test changes of the form and influence after the government performance evaluation policy’s change. The main idea of the paper is as follows. First, I sort out the relevant research results at home and abroad, to provide reference for definition, selection and analysis of indicators. Second, I summarize the present situation of China’s regional environmental regulation and determine proxy variables to measure the intensity of environmental regulation. They are defined as environmental rulemaking, environmental regulation implementation and environmental regulation supervision. Third, I take "eco-efficiency" as a comprehensive index of regional economic development and ecological environment. According to the input index and output index, super efficiency DEA method is used to measure 30 provinces’(municipalities and autonomous regions) eco-efficiency values from the year of 1997 to 2012, the result shows eastern, central and western regions are in descending order. Fourth, panel data model is used to test the form of environmental regulation competition and its influence on regional eco-efficiency from 1997-2003 and 2004-2012. Test results show that d uring the period of 1997-2003, there is obvious imitation of characteristics about environmental rulemaking and implementation, environmental regulation supervision is characterized by diversity. At the same time, the overall impact of regulation on the re gional eco-efficiency is characterized by restricting role. After 2003,with the implementation and in-depth of the “scientific development concept”, local officials will be included in the energy saving performance evaluation system, environmental regulation behaviors gradually incline to independent, imitation behavior is weakening.The influence of environmental regulation on the regional eco-efficiency is also shifted to promotion from restriction, or restriction is weakened.In summary, from the paper’s research, we find the change in government performance evaluation policy will affect regional environmental regulation behaviors toward independence, and play a positive role on the improvement of the regional eco-efficiency. In order to achieve coordinated development of economy and environment, we can do these: constantly improve legislation, law enforcement and supervision of environmental regulation to meet the requirements of economic development; according to local conditions to develop the regional economy and environmental regulation; establish diversified evaluation indicators to optimize local government performance evaluation system. In short, the paper provides an important basis for improving local government environmental regulation and diversifying political achievements evaluation mechanism.