Effect of Environmental Regulation on Industrial Solid Waste Pollution in China: From the Perspective of Formal Environmental Regulation and Informal Environmental Regulation.

Bei Xiong,Ruimei Wang

doi:10.3390/ijerph17217798

Abstract

To address the concern of environmental pollution, it is necessary to study the effect of environmental regulation on industrial solid waste emission reduction in China. This paper aimed to analyze the effectiveness of provincial environmental regulation (both formal and informal) on the industrial solid waste emission reduction. The results show that both the effect of formal and informal environmental regulations on industrial solid waste emission intensity present an inverted “U” shape. The threshold value of per capita GDP as an indicator variable is CNY 16,299 and CNY 15,572 respectively. The effect on pollution emission reduction will appear when the value is higher than the threshold, and the two-way transmission mechanism between formal and informal environmental regulations does exist. When GDP per capita exceeds CNY 27,961, there is a phenomenon of “rebound” in the effect of informal environmental regulation on pollution reduction. Based on the findings, it was suggested that both formal and informal environmental regulation should be promoted to achieve the goal of industrial solid waste emission reduction. The coordination between formal and informal environmental regulation should be considered when the government makes policies. Different environmental regulation policies should be implemented in different regions. Informal regulation should be enriched and further promoted. Environmental law should play an important role in maintaining the public’s participation in environmental regulation to prevent the failure of informal environmental regulation.

Highlights

China is facing severe environmental problems, especially in solid waste pollution, due to the unprecedented rate of industrialization, urbanization and the continuous improvement of people’s living standards [1]
To further verify the relationship between environmental regulation and solid waste pollution, enriching the research results of pollution reduction effect of informal environmental regulation, and exploring the two-way transmission mechanism of formal and informal environmental regulation, this paper proposes the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 2 (H2): Regarding the effect on solid waste emissions, there is a two-way transmission mechanism between formal and informal environmental regulation, which can affect each other’s effect on solid waste emissions
We winsorize all of the continuous variables at the 1st and the 99th percentile to remove the effect of outliers

Summary

Introduction

China is facing severe environmental problems, especially in solid waste pollution, due to the unprecedented rate of industrialization, urbanization and the continuous improvement of people’s living standards [1]. As the second largest economy, China produces the largest amount of solid waste in the world [2,3]. According to the projection of the World Bank, the total amount of solid waste in China will be over 480 million tons in 2030 [4]. According to the China Statistical Yearbook, the amount of annual industrial solid waste increased from 1756.32 million tons in 2007 to 3315.92 million tons in 2017 [7]. The industrial solid waste in China has increased by 88.8% in 10 years, which means that the rapid growth of solid waste has become a serious problem. Public Health 2020, 17, 7798; doi:10.3390/ijerph17217798 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph

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