Local environmental information disclosure and environmental non-governmental organizations in Chinese prefecture-level cities

Abstract

Many studies demonstrate that the booming number of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) in China have substantially affected on the environmental issues. However, little research has paid attention to discern the different types of ENGOs' activities. Thus, this study aims to provide the first set of quantitative data analysis to demonstrate the effects of different types of ENGOs’ effects on the governance from two major perspectives, namely, top-down and grassroots. Both perspectives offer different assumptions of whether the effects of key ENGOs on promoting urban environmental governance are national or local. This paper collects unique data from the websites of several NGO list-collecting organizations, the urban statistical yearbooks published by the Chinese government, and the pollution information transparency index released by ENGOs annually, to accurately identify the characteristics and activities of ENGOs. By using the Ordinary Least Squares regression model in which the city fixed effects are included, this study analyzes the influences of ENGOs on the levels of environmental information disclosure among over 100 prefecture-level cities from 2008 to 2015. The results primarily support the grassroots perspective. Cities with more local ENGOs have better performance in terms of environmental information disclosure. In addition, although local ENGOs allying with national NGOs have certain influences in 2014–2015, they downgrade the effects of other local ENGOs. Taken together, the findings illustrate that, while national ENGOs have received great deal of attention, possessed more resources to align local ENGOs, and had extensive opportunities to connect with international ENGOs, local ENGOs within local contexts and activities play crucial roles in the local environmental governance. Furthermore, the results also imply that although the Chinese government has reinforced control over the civil society after 2012, local ENGOs still strengthen their influences on the environmental governance.