How Government Attention Affects Environmental Governance

From the theoretical perspective of organizational attention,based on the work report of provincial governments in China from 2006 to 2015,this paper explores how government attention affects the effectiveness of environmental governance in China.How does government attention affect environmental regulation? How does environmental regulation affect the effectiveness of environmental governance? Does environmental regulation play an intermediary role in the process of government's attention affecting environmental governance? Based on Brian Jones' attention-driven policy choice model,this paper argues that the factors driving government's environmental governance are not “problem-oriented” or “preference-oriented” but “government's attention-oriented”.Therefore,this paper draws the “analysis framework of government's attention-driven environmental governance”.Based on this analysis framework,this paper argues that: first,government's attention There is a positive correlation between environmental governance performance.How does the government's attention affect the performance of environmental governance? This paper holds that the government's attention will be transmitted to the process of “environmental supervision” and will have an impact on the results of environmental governance.This study regards government attention as an independent variable,environmental governance performance as a dependent variable,and environmental supervision as an intermediary variable.At the same time,environmental supervision is divided into two levels: environmental rule of law and environmental investment.Therefore,this paper draws a more specific logical chain: the government's attention affects environmental governance performance through environmental supervision.Through the regression analysis of panel data of 31 provincial areas in China from 2006 to 2015 by Stata 14.0,this paper finds that: 1.The higher the government's attention,the lower the degree of environmental pollution,and the higher the performance of environmental governance.2.The higher the government's attention,the more the number of environmental legislation,the stronger the enforcement of environmental law,and the more the total investment in environmental protection.That is to say,the higher the government's attention,the stronger the environmental supervision.Third,the stronger the environmental supervision,the smaller the environmental pollution index,that is,the better the performance of environmental governance.Fourthly,environmental supervision weakens the effect of government attention on environmental governance performance,which means that environmental supervision does play an intermediary role in the process of the impact of government attention on environmental governance performance.In this paper,the intermediary mechanism of environmental supervision is introduced into the process of government attention affecting environmental governance,which provides a new perspective for future research and enriches the existing research.