Abstract
Air pollution has been a serious challenge for human sustainable development. Researches show that emissions from the transport sector have been found to be a main source of air pollution in cities. Governments have implemented numerous green traffic policies to mitigate harmful emissions. However, the problem as to whether the green traffic policies are effective, and the extent to which the policies affect air quality remain unknown. This paper is the first attempt to apply a difference-in-difference method to investigate how a specific green traffic policy (in our case, the green traffic pilot cities program) affects air quality. The estimates show that the pilot program is associated with consistent reductions in annual concentration of pollutants. In pilot cities of China, the annual concentration of SO 2 , NO 2 and PM 10 decrease by 10.71 percent, 11.26 percent and 9.85 percent, respectively, after the implementation of the green traffic pilot cities program. The results show that the green traffic pilot has a noticeable improvement on air quality of the pilot cities, implying that government intervention has a positive influence on pollution prevention in the transport sector. Moreover, the green traffic system construction can be popularized in other cities to mitigate air pollution.
Highlights
Air pollution in cities has been a serious environment problem in China, and has negative effect on sustainable development
In 2012, the Chinese government enacted the first plan on the prevention and control of air pollution: Prevention and Control of Air Pollution in Key Regions of the 12th Five-Year Plan, proposing that China should promote the sustainable development of urban transport
A test is made for the presence of groupwise heteroskedasticity, autocorrelation within panel and cross-sectional correlation because of the long panel data we used in the SO2, NO2 and PM10 functions, respectively
Summary
Air pollution in cities has been a serious environment problem in China, and has negative effect on sustainable development. In 2012, the Chinese government enacted the first plan on the prevention and control of air pollution: Prevention and Control of Air Pollution in Key Regions of the 12th Five-Year Plan, proposing that China should promote the sustainable development of urban transport. The Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan, issued by the State Council in September 2013, may signal the Chinese government’s intent to make air pollution a priority and strengthen the implementation of related policies [13]. This Action Plan further emphasizes that cities should intensify the management of urban traffic and develop public transportation energetically. Some important problems remain unknown: Does the green traffic policy improve the air quality? To what extent does the specific policy affect the environment and air quality?
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