Environmental protection tax superseded pollution fees, does China effectively abate ecological footprints?

Abstract

This paper constructs the ecological footprint accounts for 30 provinces in China, and explores the effects of environmental policies from the perspective of various ecological footprints. We innovatively focus on the impact which pollution fees superseded environmental protection tax on ecological footprints. The effects of these two environmental policies in China is compared with the panel smooth transition regression model (PSTR). In comparison with pollution fees, environmental protection tax has a stronger inhibition on ecological footprints. Pollution fees can lessen the cropland's ecological footprint, but this negative effect presents marginal diminishing. As for the ecological footprints of fishing grounds and fossil energy land, when pollution fees exceed 2.002 and 2.011 (‱ of GDP) respectively, there will be a restraining effect. Pollution fees has no effect on reducing the ecological footprints of grazing land, forest land, infrastructure, and the total. The environmental protection tax has a negative impact of linearity on the ecological footprints of fishing grounds and forest land. When environmental protection tax exceeds the corresponding thresholds (1.226, 3.482, 1.867 and 3.083), it will decrease the ecological footprints of grazing land, infrastructure, fossil energy land, and the total. The negative effect of environmental protection tax on cropland's ecological footprint is not obvious. Further, the change charts of influence coefficient on ecological footprints are drawn to directly reflect the optimal tax range for environmental protection tax to diminish ecological footprints. The heterogeneity analysis reveal that the current environmental protection tax only inhibits the total ecological footprint of eight provinces, mostly in northern China. These conclusions have reference significance for the government to adjust the appropriate environmental protection tax rate.