Turnover of environmental protection officials and transboundary water pollution

The impact of the river chief system on transboundary water pollution

The River Chief System (RCS) in China plays a crucial role in addressing transboundary water pollution (TWP), which is vital for achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of "clean water." This study examines the static and dynamic effects of the RCS on TWP using a difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) model and manually collected RCS data from 104 counties between 2007 and 2020. The results show that the RCS significantly reduces chemical oxygen demand (COD) by 15.9% and ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N) by 22.9% in border counties, though it has no notable impact on dissolved oxygen (DO). Additionally, RCS intensity contributes to a 13.8% reduction in COD. However, no sustained dynamic effects are observed for COD or NH3-N reduction over time. Several robustness checks confirm the validity of these findings. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the RCS's impact is more pronounced in counties with higher economic development, upstream locations, lower initial pollution levels, and younger local government leaders. This study not only provides critical insights for water resource management in China but also offers international relevance for addressing TWP governance challenges in transboundary water bodies.

Official Turnover and Corporate ESG Practices: Evidence from China

In recent years, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) have been extensive concerned. However, few studies have focused on the impact of situational factors on corporate ESG practice decisions. Based on this, using 9428 observations of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2019, this paper attempts to explore the impact of local official turnover on corporate ESG practices, and analyzes the boundary effects of this impact from three aspects: region, industry, and corporate. Our results suggest that (1) official turnover can lead to changes in economic policies and redistribution of political resources, which can stimulate companies' "risk aversion motivation" and "development motivation" and thus promote their ESG practices; (2) this effect is more significant in the high degree of government intervention, the high level of industry competition and private corporates. (3) Further test finds that only when the official turnover abnormally and the regional economic development well, official turnover can significantly contribute to corporate ESG. This paper enriches the relevant research on the decision-making scenarios of corporate ESG practices from the macro-institutional perspective.

The impact of accountability on local officials' behavior in the pandemic prevention and control in China based on utility maximization

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis and an inspection of national governance systems and crisis response capabilities of countries globally. China has adopted a tough accountability system for officials and has succeeded in containing the spread of the pandemic. This study aimed to assess the impact of accountability on local officials’ behavior in the pandemic prevention and control based on the official promotion tournament theory and utility maximization analysis framework.

Methods

The panel data of 237 Chinese cities were extracted with local officials’ characteristics, confirmed cases, Baidu migration index, Baidu search index according to city names, and data were excluded with local officials’ relocation or sub-provincial cities between January 1, 2020 and May 5, 2020. Promotion gain and accountability cost were constructed by adopting promotion speed indicator, and the research hypotheses were assumed based on the utility maximization. It was the first time to apply the interaction model to empirically investigate the relationship between the promotion speed of local officials and the COVID-19 confirmed cases.

Results

Our study showed that the promotion speed of provincial governors and mayors significantly affected the number of confirmed cases (β = − 11.615, P < 0.01). There was a significant interaction between the promotion speeds of provincial governors and mayors (β = − 2594.1, P < 0.01), indicating that they had a coordinated effect on the pandemic control. Additionally, mayors with different promotion speeds made a significant difference in controlling the imported cases and those who promoted faster better controlled the imported cases (β = − 0.841, P < 0.01). Mayors with full-time postgraduate education, titles, and majors in science and engineering had a better effect on controlling the number of confirmed cases.

Conclusions

Our study provides evidence that the official accountability system has played an important role in containing the pandemic, which suggests that local officials motivated by the accountability system would respond to the pandemic actively for higher utility. Furthermore, provincial governors and mayors have played a coordinated effect in pandemic control. The above evidences reveal that implementing the official accountability system could improve the government’s emergency management capability and the efficiency of pandemic control. Therefore, adopting a strict accountability system could be effective in pandemic containment globally, especially in centralized countries.

How Has China Structured Its Ecological Governance Policy System?-A Case from Fujian Province

Ecological civilization (EC) has been seen as the final goal of social and environmental reform within a given society. Much attention has been paid to the national governmental level in previous studies, and district- and local-level government actions have been a lower priority, which may have led to overlooking key details of management institutions and policy systems in relation to EC. In this research, we aimed to make a significant contribution to the literature by tracing the EC trajectory and policy transitions. Through bibliometric analysis of policy documents, we reviewed the EC construction system for Fujian Province from 2004 to 2020. The policy priorities, organization-functional network, and contributing factors to policy changes in each of the three phases are discussed in depth. Target setting, actors' functions, and institutional guarantees are the core elements of EC construction. This research provides a quantitative foundation for understanding policy reform and transition with regards to Chinese local governments' EC actions. The experience of Fujian Province shows trends toward legalization, multi-actor linkage, and issue refinement that may serve as a basis for other countries and regions in order to explore the promotion of sustainable development and environmental governance as pathways to EC.

Can China's pollution reduction mandates improve transboundary water pollution?

This paper discusses how the pollution prevention mandate imposed by China's central government triggers water pollution across provincial borders. Because the central government has put the pollutant reduction into the promotion evaluation, and pollution control in the downstream area of a province mainly brings benefit to other regions, the provincial officials are incentivized to reduce the water pollutants away from the downstream city and strengthen environmental regulation within the province. We apply the difference-in-differences-differences (DDD) method to the dataset on water quality in cities along 18 major rivers in China from 2007 through 2016. We find that compared with the interior cities, the most downstream city of a province faces worse water quality. Besides, we find that environmental policy significantly increases the extent of pollution across jurisdictional boundaries. Then, we turn on the mechanism and find that the pollutant reduction target is significantly lower in the most downstream city of a province. Unanticipated provincial government behavior leads to severe transboundary water pollution.