How does the environmental performance assessment promote pollution reduction: An analysis of the first obligatory pollution reduction target plan in China

Abstract

Environmental performance assessment (EPA) is vital in environmental governance and green development. Based on the policy experiment of the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Air Pollution in China, this paper analyzes the impact of EPA in reducing pollution using the difference-in-differences (DID) model and data from 108 cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) (2008–2020). The study finds that EPA significantly reduced PM2.5 emissions, which means that the implementation of EPA is conducive to improving the effectiveness of pollution reduction. After parallel trend tests and robustness tests by three methods, the results are still stable. The mechanism analysis finds that enhancing local government competition will weaken the pollution reduction effect of EPA. The heterogeneity analysis shows that compared to the upper and middle reaches of the YREB, EPA significantly reduces downstream pollution. In the context of global sustainable development, this study attempts to provide policy references for developing countries to formulate environmental policies and local governments to optimize environmental performance evaluation.