Impact of mandatory targets on PM2.5 concentration control in Chinese cities

Abstract

Abstract China suffers from severe hazy conditions, and the central government has introduced a mandatory target responsibility system to curb haze pollution. It is of policy importance to explore whether the mandatory target responsibility system is effective at improving the performance of environmental governance in China. However, studies have tended to ignore the impact of mandatory targets on PM2.5 concentration control. To fill this gap, this study, based on a nationwide dataset of 267 Chinese cities, applies a novel two-stage regression approach to identify the causal relationship between mandatory targets and PM2.5 concentration reduction by solving the endogeneity bias. The results demonstrate that a 1% increase in mandatory PM2.5 performance targets helped reduce the annual average PM2.5 concentrations by 0.5283 μg/m3 on average after nearly 2 years of implementation. Moreover, the PM2.5 concentrations of Chinese cities showed strong positive spatial dependence, and when spatial dependence is controlled, the average marginal impact of mandatory targets on PM2.5 concentration reduction decreased to 0.1998 μg/m3. This research confirms the spatial agglomeration of PM2.5 concentrations across Chinese cities and highlights the effectiveness of the mandatory target responsibility system for the control of China's haze pollution.