Environmental Policy Stringency Research Articles

Interprovincial Differences in Air Pollution in the Background of China’s Carbon Neutrality Target

Increasing air pollution, particularly in terms of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone (O3), caused by large-scale fossil fuel combustion, affects human health and economic activities in China. In this study, we analyzed the spatiotemporal trends of carbon emissions, carbon emission intensity, and concentrations of PM2.5 and O3 in 30 provincial-level administrative regions of China during 2010–2019. Overall, an increasing trend was observed in carbon emissions, with high emissions occurring in Shandong, Hebei, and Jiangsu in particular. The highest growth rates of carbon emissions were 169% and 117% in Xinjiang and Ningxia, respectively. Conversely, the carbon emission intensities and concentrations of PM2.5 and O3 decreased across the study regions at different rates. The western and central regions experienced the greatest decrease in carbon emissions in 2019 compared with that of 2010, followed by those in the northeastern and eastern regions. Spatiotemporal variations suggest that pollution control is essential for improving air quality and offsetting the negative impact of increased energy consumption. Overall, this study shows that pollution control policies lead to short-term improvements in air quality, and hence that the implementation of stringent environmental protection policies is essential.

Does political ideology affect the stringency of environmental policy?

AbstractThe political‐ideological assumption postulates that different political parties have different preferences toward the urgency of environmental sustainability. This article examines the relationship between political ideology and environmental policy stringency. I employ robust econometric specification on 23 OECD countries over 23 years. Results show a significant relationship between political ideology and environmental policy stringency. However, contrary to expectation, I find that environmental policies are less stringent in leftist governments. The findings suggest that leftist governments have not successfully incorporated their perceived environmentalism ideology into stringent environmental policies due to their lesser preference for law and order. I also find that the electoral politics view theory does not hold in the relationship between political ideology and environmental policy stringency. The findings, which are robust to various econometric identifications and alternative measurement of variables, add new insights on partisan politics and environmental sustainability.Related ArticlesMurray, Gregg R., and Matthew K. Mulvaney. 2012. “Parenting Styles, Socialization, and the Transmission of Political Ideology and Partisanship.” Politics & Policy 40(6): 1106–30. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2012.00395.xWinburn, Jonathan, and Amanda Winburn. 2020. “The Role of Political Ideology in Public Opinion toward Enumerated Antibullying Policies in Public Schools.” Politics & Policy 48(3): 442–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12355Zang, Xiaowei. 2021. “Environmental Accidents and Environmental Legislation in China: Evidence from Provincial Panel Data (1997–2014).” Politics & Policy 50(1): 77–92. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12446

Environmental commitments in different types of democracies: The role of liberal, social-liberal, and deliberative politics

Since a more substantial recognition of environmental degradation in the 1960s, the scholarly community has looked at democracy with mixed feelings. Some assert that democracy is devastating for the environmental performance, some claim the opposite, while others suggest that certain democratic models are more successful than others in paving the way for sustainability. Both political theorists and empirical scholars add fuel to this debate, and neither has settled the argument yet. In this paper we make use of recently collected data from the Varieties of Democracy project on different conceptions of democracy and address both these literatures. We empirically test whether different features of democracies, i.e., liberal in its thinner understanding, social-liberal, and deliberative, are more or less beneficial for environmental commitments. We investigate which of these features make democracies more prone to produce environmental policy outputs – adopt climate laws, deliver on them, develop stringent environmental policies, and incorporate sustainability into economic policies. We find that democracies with stronger deliberative features adopt more, but not necessarily stricter or more effective, environmental policies. Instead, democracies with stronger social-liberal features adopt both stricter and more effective policies.

An Analysis of the Pollution Haven Hypothesis (PHH) Using Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Induced Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) in OECD Countries

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and CO2 emissions in OECD countries, and to examine the validity of the evidence for pollution haven hypothesis (PHH) using environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). Design/Methodology/Approach This study utilized 26 OECD countries’ panel and time-series data, which included GDP per capita, FDI outflow, energy uses, renewable energy uses, environmental policy stringency (EPS) index, and CO2 emissions. The econometric procedures were adopted by panel analysis, dynamic panel data (DPD) analysis, and ordinary least square (OLS) for each OECD country. Findings First, in the linear model, the increase of GDP, FDI, renewable energy use, and EPS index have contributed to the decreasing of CO2 emissions. Second, in the non-linear model, the evidence for EKC hypothesis have U-shaped or inverted U-shaped curves, depending on the panel analysis procedures. Finally, in the time-series data analysis, even if 13 OECD countries had the evidence for the EKC hypothesis, there were small portions of the 26 OECD countries with the validity for PHH. Research Implications Policy makers need to consider both the existence of OECD countries on PHH and the economic impact of FDI outflows. Also, we need environmentally friendly policies and technologies to reduce the negative environmental effects of FDI outflows to developing countries. Thus, it is necessary to intensify the international corporation and additional environmental policies to reduce CO2 emissions by increasing the scale effect of FDI.

The pollution haven effect and investment leakage: The case of the EU-ETS

Are polluting firms more likely to invest in environmentally lax countries when confronted with increasingly stringent unilateral environmental policies at home? To answer this question, we explore the relationship between carbon inefficiency, regulatory pressure and the foreign direct investment (FDI) projects of multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating under the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) during its third phase (2013–2020). Contrary to prior research on its initial and more lenient phases, we provide novel evidence on the existence of a pollution haven effect which enables both investment leakage as well as carbon leakage outside the EU-ETS’s jurisdiction. These results highlight the dangers of implementing a stringent unilateral climate policy from both an economic and an environmental perspective.

Environmental sustainability in Asian countries: Understanding the criticality of economic growth, industrialization, tourism import, and energy use

This paper examines the causation between economic growth, tourism import, industrialization, renewable energy, non-renewable energy use, trade openness, and environmental sustainability which is proxied by carbon emissions for 8 Asian countries (China, Japan, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) over 20 years. Causal relations were tested using Pooled Mean Group Autoregressive distributive lag model (PMG-ARDL) and Dumitrescu and Hurlin's (2012) panel granger causality test The PMG-ARDL model results reveal that in the long-run renewable energy usage, economic growth, and trade have a significant negative influence on the emission of carbon, while non-renewable energy usage, tourism import, and industrialization exhibit a significant positive impact on CO2 emissions of the sampled Asian countries. In the short run, renewable energy has a significant negative influence on CO2 emissions. While economic growth exhibit a significant positive influence on carbon emissions in the short-run. Furthermore, the Granger causality analysis reveals that there is a feedback mechanism between industrialization, tourism import, non-renewable energy, renewable energy, and CO2 emissions meaning that the future dynamics of carbon emissions in the sampled countries can be significantly explained by industrialization, tourism import, renewable energy, and non-renewable energy. Contrarily, trade and economic growth are good to explain the dynamics of carbon effusion of the sampled Asian countries in the future but without feedback. It is recommended that policymakers in Asian countries should formulate stringent environmental policies that will encourage industries in these countries to utilize clean energy sources so that economic growth will be achieved simultaneously with carbon neutrality.

Analyzing the role of environmental technologies and environmental policy stringency on green growth in China.

This study aims to investigate the impact of environmental technological innovations and environmental policy stringency on green economic growth in China. The empirical analysis of the study is based on the ARDL model. Findings confirm that environmental technology positively impacts green economic growth in the short and long run. In the robust model, the estimates of all technologies appeared to be significantly positive in the short and long run. Conversely, the estimated coefficients of environmental policy stringency, in the basic and robust model, have only negatively impacted the green economic growth in China in the short run. In the long run, the environmental policy stringency has not shown any significant impact on green economic growth in China in the basic and robust model. China needs to increase environmental technology and environmental policy stringency for achieving green growth and sustainability targets.

Trade Openness and Environmental Policy Stringency: Quantile Evidence

The intensively debated issue of whether trade globalization leads to a race (climb) to the bottom (top) such that environmental policy stringency is loosened (strengthened) is still far from being uncontroversial. This paper provides new empirical evidence from the standpoint of the North (advanced) countries using both the generalized methods of moment (GMM) and GMM quantile estimators for dynamic panel data models. It first investigates the importance of trade partners and finds, in a sample of OECD countries, that increased trade with the South (developing) countries leads to more stringent environmental regulation whereas heightened trade with the North eases environmental regulation. It then examines whether there exist differences across regimes with different extents of stringency in environmental regulation and finds significant regime-specific effects. Specifically, liberalizing trade with the North weakens environmental regulation stringency in a regime with medium stringency but reinforces it in a regime with high and low stringency. Conversely, expanded trade with the South raises environmental regulation stringency in a regime with medium stringency but deteriorates it in a regime with high and low stringency.

The institutional and socio-technical determinants of renewable energy production in the EU: implications for policy

Despite the consensus that the transition to renewable energy is a process that encompasses institutional, regulatory, technical, political, social, and cultural aspects, such issues have rarely been addressed in a comprehensive way. This study explores the determinants of renewable energy production (REP), focusing on institutional and socio-technical aspects. We employ a panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model to test dynamic relationships for the period 1990–2015 among several variables, as have emerged in the literature: REP, policy stringency, public awareness, lobbying, education, controlling for income and energy imports. Focusing indiscriminately on 18 European Union (EU) member states, the results show that environmental policy stringency does not influence REP, while income and education impact negatively. This evidence is counter-intuitive, and would be surprising if we did not consider the strong heterogeneity between countries. EU member states are engaging in energy transition at different speeds, depending on their individual starting point: this differs from country to country in terms of installed capacity and energy security. Moving from the recent European Green Deal, we divide the sample into two panels based on energy imports to account for different starting points: countries less active on the production side (that depends particularly on energy imports), and countries more active on the production side. Results for the first panel show that an increase in policy stringency would lead to a decrease in lobbying and an increase in REP. Policy efforts must be clearly established and consistently preserved to support REP, at least if there are increasing returns to exploit. Results for the second panel show that lobbying negatively affects the transition to REP, while an increase in public awareness will promote an increase in REP. Therefore, priority should be given to the ‘social’ aspect, and policymakers should increase efforts to reduce the proportion of energy generated from oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear fuel.

Environmental regulation stringency and foreign direct investment

AbstractThe effects of environmental regulation stringency on foreign direct investment are noted in the existing literature. However, current literature appears to have ignored the feedback effects from foreign investment to environmental regulation stringency. This feedback effect plays a significant role in designing policies to attract foreign investment to support economic growth and improve environmental quality concurrently. This study examines the feedback effects from foreign investment on environmental regulation stringency using the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) newly developed Environmental Policy Stringency Index for 26 OECD countries for almost three decades since 1990. The key findings from this study to the existing literature are threefold. First, we find that foreign investment affects the environment regulation stringency via lobbying. However, when the number of legislative units in the host countries is large enough, the lobbying effect diminishes, particularly for the larger‐gross domestic product (GDP) and the higher‐per‐capita‐income OECD countries. Second, our empirical results confirm the U‐shaped relationship between manufacturing activities and the environmental regulation stringency. Third, the bilateral relationship between environmental regulation stringency and foreign investment is found, indicating that ignoring foreign investment in designing environmental policies is problematic. Finally, policy implications have emerged based on the findings from this study.

Do research and development and environmental knowledge spillovers facilitate meeting sustainable development goals for resource efficiency?

We investigate whether research and development (R&D) and environmental knowledge spillovers aid economies in meeting the targets of the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns (SDG12). We do so by utilizing panel data from the European Union, Japan, and USA over the period of 2002–2017 and a production function approach. The results show that whereas R&D, in general, works against meeting the targets set in SDG12, environmental knowledge spillovers facilitate achieving the goal. Additionally, and as expected, the results support the positive effect of control of corruption and resource scarcity but a negative impact of environmental policy stringency for SDG12. The latter result might be due to environmental policies facilitating end-of-the-pipe solutions rather than supporting decreased resource and material use and waste generation. The findings indicate that instead of just supporting all (green and dirty) R&D, policymakers should devise measures that specifically facilitate environmental innovation (not just “any innovation”) and knowledge spillovers stemming from such green technologies, to support sustainable development via innovation.

Optimal setting strategy of electrocoagulation process in heavy metal wastewater treatment plant

With the increasingly stringent environmental protection policies of various countries, the contradiction between the treatment cost and the purification degree of environmental pollutants has become increasingly significant, which has become a major factor restricting the efficient operation of wastewater treatment plants. Hence, keeping the ion concentration at the outlet as low as possible while reducing the cost are the main objectives of treating heavy metal wastewater by electrocoagulation (EC) process. However, due to the complicated mechanism and uncertain production conditions, it is difficult to achieve those goals by manually setting the current through operators’ experience. In this paper, we develop a dynamic multi-objective optimization strategy for EC process to balance these two conflicting production targets. First, we define the removal efficiency (RE) to measure the effectiveness of the EC process. Due to the anodic passivation and cathodic polarization in the EC process, the current reversing period (CRP) is proposed and optimized to ensure the stable performance of the electrodes. Then the current setting problem is formulated as a constrained multi-objective optimization problem with competing objectives of RE and cost. An interval-adjustable control parameterization (CP) approach is developed to reduce the complexity of this optimization problem. To compute this optimization problem, a heuristic method named multi-objective state transition algorithm (MOSTA) with evaluation value is investigated. The effectiveness of our model and optimization strategy is demonstrated by a successful implementation in an EC process of a wastewater treatment plant in Chenzhou, China.

Does green environmental policy promote renewable energy consumption in BRICST? Fresh insights from panel quantile regression

Understanding the aspects of renewable energy consumption is important because it contains low-carbon emissions, which could significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Little research is done on exploring the factors of renewable energy consumption. The primary objective of this study is to examine the impact of the green environmental policy on renewable energy consumption in the BRICST economies over data ranging from 1991 and 2019 by using panel quantile regression. The fixed-effects and quantile regressions confirm the positive effects of economic growth and non-renewable energy on renewable energy consumption. In contrast, the consumer price index and CO2 hurt the renewable energy consumption in the BRICST economies. The estimate of the environmental policy stringency appears to be negative and insignificant in the fixed-effects model. On the other side, the estimates of the environmental stringency index appear to be positively significant from the 10th–40th quantiles and negatively significant from 50th–90th quantiles. Robust policy implications of our outcomes are also discussed.

The transition of renewable energy and ecological sustainability through environmental policy stringency: Estimations from advance panel estimators

Due to growing awareness and increased pressure from stakeholders, global economies impose stringent environmental policies to control climate changes, which instigate the transition of renewable energy. Following the same aspects, the present study elucidates the impacts of environmental policy stringency and renewable energy transition on environmental quality for BRICS economies. This study employs a cross-section augmented autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) framework on data from 1990 to 2019. The results reveal that stringent environmental policies are one of the most significant ways to impede carbon emissions (CE) in BRICS economies. Besides, renewable energy has an inverse relationship with CE. On the other hand, the industrial value-added and economic growth are positively significant to CE. Furthermore, renewable energy transition is integrated into the model using interaction terms of renewable energy and stringent environmental policies. The finding described that the combined effects of these two variables are more substantial than their individual impacts on CE reduction, confirming the transition of renewable energy through stringent regulations. The study provides valuable insights to policymakers to facilitate the overall environmental quality in BRICS economies by focusing on strict environmental policies. These results have also delineated the importance of renewable energies to mitigate CE.

Does environmental policy stringency reduce CO2 emissions? Evidence from high-polluted economies

The main objective of this study is to get the asymmetric effects of environmental policy stringency on CO2 emissions in top emitter's economies named China, USA, India, Russia, and Japan by using non-linear panel ARDL approach. The non-linear model infers that an increase in environmental policy stringency improves the environmental quality by reducing CO2 emissions in the long run. While a negative change in environmental policy stringency is also reducing the CO2 emissions in the long run. Indeed the asymmetric effects between positive and negative change in the environmental policy stringency are also confirmed in magnitude only in the long-run, thus the policymakers should consider positive as well as negative changes while devising the rules and regulations related to the environment. The study suggests that the high polluted economies need to revisit green environmental regulations policies.

Coalition inclusion probabilities: a party-strategic measure for predicting policy and politics

AbstractPolicy in coalition governments (a) depends on negotiations between parties that (b) continue between elections. No extant means of predicting policy—bargaining power indices, vote shares, seat shares, polling, veto players or measures of electoral competitiveness—recognizes both of these facts. We conceptualize, estimate and validate the first dynamic measure of parties’ bargaining leverage intended to predict policy and politics. We argue that those parties with the greatest leverage in policy negotiations are those with the highest probability of participating in an alternative government, were one to form. Combining a large set of political polls and an empirical coalition formation model developed with out-of-sample testing, we estimate coalition inclusion probabilities for parties in a sample of 21 parliamentary democracies at a monthly frequency over four decades. Applications to government spending and to the stringency of environmental policy show leverage from coalition inclusion probabilities to be strongly predictive while the primary alternatives—vote shares, seat shares and polls—are not.

Stepping up to the mark? Firms’ export activity and environmental innovation in 14 European countries

ABSTRACT We investigate the ability of exports to trigger the adoption of environmental innovation (EI) in firms, shedding light on the determinants of convergence in environmental standards for Europe’s catch-up economies. To analyse this question empirically, we measure the latter as the 1) probability a firm adopts EI and the 2) breadth of EI adoption in firms. Applying Logit and Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimations to firm-level data for 14 European countries, we find that particularly Eastern European exporters report higher EI adoption propensities, an effect exclusively driven by process-based EI and not observable for product-based EI. Additionally, we reveal that regardless of a firm’s origin, exposure to importing countries with high market-related environmental policy stringency, is linked to the adoption of EI. We conclude that learning-by-exporting, regulation-push and demand-pull mechanisms may help to explain these findings, with foreign markets being characterised by a wider diversity of stakeholder preferences.

The asymmetric effect of environmental policy stringency on CO2 emissions in OECD countries.

This paper uses a quantile fixed-effect panel data approach to investigate how environmental policy stringency affects CO2 emissions in a set of 32 countries from 1990 to 2015, using OECD data. This approach allows us to identify the asymmetric impact of policy stringency on emissions, considering the emission level recorded in each analysed country. More precisely, we posit that the effectiveness of environmental regulations and policies is influenced by the air pollution level. Our results show that an increase in policy stringency has a negative impact on emissions and that environmental stringency has a more powerful impact in the countries with lower levels of carbon emissions. In addition, we show that policy stringency measures only became effective after the implementation of the Kyoto agreement, whereas the policy stringency effect is stronger for EU countries at high risk of missing the 20-20-20 target in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Lastly, policy implications refer to the need to adapt policy stringency measures to emission levels to increase their effectiveness. At the same time, the setting up of emission targets determines policymakers to be more engaged in the fight against carbon emissions.

The Impact of Environmental Technology and Environmental Policy Strictness on China's Green Growth and Analysis of Development Methods.

Environmental technology and the stringency of environmental policies have a certain effect on green growth in the country, and the sustainable development of the environment under the influence of green growth requires the effective application of the environmental technology based on such institutional policies related to the environment. In this paper, the mutual effect of green growth on the ecological environment is fully analyzed to identify an intrinsic link between them. Based on the intrinsic link, policies related to environment protection and environmental technology are conducive to facilitating green growth while at the same time playing a continuous role in the improvement of the environment. Driven by the factors of scientific and technological innovation, it can boost the harmonious development of the economy and the environment. The empirical evidence has demonstrated that the appropriate environmental policy and environmental technology model can be identified with full understanding of the environmental policy and environmental technology. At the same time, the industry drive and technological innovation can also be taken as a strong support for the environmental policy and the environmental technology in accordance with the market demand through research from the perspective of the government, the market, and the general public. The stringency of environmental policies has substantially increased the requirements of environmental technology, and the innovation of environmental technology, the structure of economic organizations, and the level of development have a great effect on the green growth in the country.

Does Being Stricter Mean Doing Better? Different Effects of Environmental Policy Stringency on Quality of Life, Green Innovation, And International Cooperation

Does Being Stricter Mean Doing Better? Different Effects of Environmental Policy Stringency on Quality of Life, Green Innovation, And International Cooperation