Abstract
Environmental pollution damages public health and affects economic development. Environmental regulation is the main way for the government to solve environmental pollution. So what type of environmental regulation works better for public health and economic development? Can environmental regulation have an influence on economic development through public health? To solve these problems, this research uses China’s provincial panel data from 2013 to 2017 to divide environmental regulation into command-control policy tools and economic incentive policy tools and uses the mediating effect model to examine the relationship among environmental regulation, public health and economic development. The results show that: (1) There is a positive correlation between economic incentive policy tools and economic development; while no significant relationship between command-control policy tools and economic development is founded; (2) The relationship between command-control policy tools and public health is not significant, while the relationship between economic incentive policy tools and public health is positive; (3) Public health does not play a mediating role between command-control policy tools and economic development but plays a partial mediating role between economic incentive policy tools and economic development. Therefore, the government should strengthen the use of economic incentive policy tools to promote public health and sustainable economic development.
Highlights
This paper introduces the square term of command-control policy tools into the model, takes economic development as the dependent variable, takes command-control policy tools and economic incentive policy tools as the core explanatory variables, and takes public health as the mediator variable to examine the role of environmental regulation policy tools in economic development and whether there is a mediating effect of public health
Most of the existing literature focuses on the two dimensions of environmental regulation, public health and economic development
The existing literature often ignores the differences between different policy tools when measuring environmental regulation
Summary
Since the reform and opening-up, China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has achieved breakthrough growth. Damage to public health can exacerbate the social burden of disease and affect the quality of human capital This directly reduces attendance, social work hours, and productivity and hinders economic development. The study on the above problems is a strong practical guide to the formulation of environmental regulation policies under the background of the new normal, and conducive to the protection of public health, development of ecological civilization construction, and improvement of sustainable economic and social development. The mediating effect model is used to empirically examine the relationship among environmental regulation, public health, and economic development On this basis, this study gives corresponding policy implications for the Chinese government to formulate objective and effective environmental regulation policies
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