Does Coastal Local Government Competition Increase Coastal Water Pollution? Evidence from China.

Weiteng Shen,Bernadette Tadala Imwa,Xuan Yu,Qiuguang Hu

doi:10.3390/ijerph17186862

Weiteng Shen, Bernadette Tadala Imwa + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17186862

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Abstract

China has formulated many policies and regulations for the management of the coastal water environment. However, the coastal water environment has not been significantly improved. The perspective of local government competition can provide an explanation for this phenomenon. This study uses panel data comprising 48 coastal cities in China from 2004 to 2017 as bases explore the impact of coastal local government competition on coastal water pollution by using a two-way fixed-effects panel regression model. Results show that coastal local government competition increased coastal water pollution. However, a sub-sample estimation based on fiscal pressure shows that coastal local government competition only increased the coastal water pollution of the high fiscal pressure group, and its impact on the coastal water pollution in the low financial pressure group failed to pass the significance test. In addition, sub-sample estimation based on different periods shows that the impact of coastal local government competition on coastal water pollution was not significant before 2008, but showed a significant positive impact after 2008.

Highlights

The ocean is the blue home on which mankind depends, with its rich resources and strong pollution absorption capacity
This study used the fixed-effects panel regression model to test the impact of local government competition on coastal water pollution
The estimation results show that without the addition of control variables, the estimated coefficient of LNPERFDI is significantly positive at the 5% level, thereby indicating that local government competition will increase coastal water pollution

Summary

Introduction

The ocean is the blue home on which mankind depends, with its rich resources and strong pollution absorption capacity. The continuous increase of human and economic activities has extensively damaged the marine environment [1], the coastal waters directly touched by human activities. IV seawater accounted for 35.9% in China’s coastal waters. Such seawater cannot be directly touched by humans, and cannot meet the basic conditions for the survival of the majority of organisms. This proportion generally declined after over 10 years of governance. The current marine environmental pollution has become one of the main obstacles for the high-quality development of China’s economy.

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