Target Responsibility System Research Articles

A STUDY ON THE FACTORS INFLUENCING THE TURNOVER BEHAVIOR OF NEW GENERATION EMPLOYEES IN INSURANCE COMPANIES

Along with the rapid development of the insurance industry, the requirements for insurance practitioners are also increasing. From traditional insurance businesses to digital businesses, employees are required to maintain a high level of learning and work abilities in order to face the complex and ever-changing market environment. The advantages of the new generation of employees are their strong work ability and high learning ability, but the disadvantages are that they have distinct personalities and do not attach enough importance to the authority of their leaders. They like to act according to their own style when doing things. Using the new generation of employees properly can benefit the organization, but improper use can cause harm. With the increasing proportion of new-generation employees in the organization, how to effectively manage them, reduce their turnover rate, and ensure the stable development of the talent team is an issue that organizational management should pay attention to. Empirical analysis shows that three influencing factors, namely organizational fairness, promotion channels based on the term target responsibility system, and a highly flexible salary structure, can reduce the probability of turnover behavior among the new generation of employees in insurance companies. The highly flexible salary structure has the greatest impact on the turnover behavior of new generation employees in insurance companies, proving that addressing the material needs of new generation employees can stabilize the talent pool of new generation employees.

Shared recycling model for waste electrical and electronic equipment based on the targeted responsibility system in the context of China

The formal recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) has long faced collection difficulties owing to the inadequate recycling system and insufficient collection capacity under China’s fund-based recycling model. The government has introduced the recycling Target Responsibility System (TRS) to motivate producers to develop and share recycling systems, yet without clear incentive mechanisms. In this study, we provide a “1 + N” shared recycling model referring to the theory of the sharing economy, and we propose a credit mechanism with a deposit system and a penalty mechanism for dishonesty to constrain the opportunistic behavior of sharing. In addition, according to the TRS, we design a “reduction-penalty-subsidy” fund policy to incentivize producers and recyclers to achieve recycling targets. On this basis, we apply evolutionary game theory and system dynamics approach to analyze the collaborative mechanism of shared recycling and the incentive effect of the funding policy. Game analysis yields the evolution of shared recycling from the developing stage to the mature stage. The system simulation results indicate that the government’s “penalty” and “subsidy” strategies provide evident incentives for producers and recyclers, respectively, in the developing stage, whereas endogenous dynamics derived from economies of scale under market mechanisms promote the multi-agent collaborative implementation of shared recycling in the mature stage.

Innovation target responsibility system, capital allocation and regional innovation capacity: Evidence from China✰

Using the pilot construction of innovative provinces in China as an exogenous shock, our difference-in-differences estimate shows that the target responsibility system has a significant and positive impact on regional innovation capacity, which is robust to a variety of robustness checks. Furthermore, this active innovation role is stronger in cities with higher marketization level, higher initial innovation capacity and more bank branches. Our mechanism tests show that the credit supply of local banks and fiscal expenditures on science and technology increase after this reform. Taken together, our findings argue that China's patent boom can be partly attributed to the increased emphasis of governments on innovation.

Local governments’ responses to the environmental target responsibility system: Evidence from Chinese prefectures

Local governments’ responses to the environmental target responsibility system: Evidence from Chinese prefectures

Urban-biased policy, government intervention and urban-rural income gap: evidence from provincial government work reports in China

PurposeThis paper aims to test the causal relationship between urban-biased policy and urban-rural income gap and further examine the moderating role of government intervention.Design/methodology/approachBased on the provincial Government Work Reports and the long-term policy practice of implementing the target responsibility system, the authors construct a unique indicator of urban-biased policy in China. Further, applying the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces in 2003–2018, the authors explore the causal relationship between urban-biased policy and urban-rural income gap.FindingsThe results show that urban-biased policy has contributed to the widen urban-rural income gap in China, which supports Lipton's urban-biased hypothesis. Further research shows that the stronger the government intervention, the bigger the role of urban-biased policy in widening urban-rural income gap.Originality/valueOn the one hand, this study not only investigates the direct effect of urban-biased policy on urban-rural income gap, but also examines the moderating effect from the perspective of government intervention, which helps to enrich the relevant studies of urban-biased theory. On the other hand, the authors' findings provide the latest empirical evidence for urban-biased policy to widen urban-rural income gap and presents a reference and warning for China and other developing countries about balancing the relationship between equity and efficiency during economic development.

Does Environmental Policy with Veto Power Lead to Heterogeneous Emission? Evidence from China

Under the high-powered target responsibility system since 2007, with newly added environmental criterion, this study seeks to examine the effectiveness of the target-based performance assessment as an accelerator for local officials to be “greener”. This coercive environmental policy incorporates a stringent “one-vote” veto criterion for cadre promotion, meaning that officials who exceed emissions standards will not be promoted, no matter how outstanding their other performances are. Based on a panel data of 106 observations of provincial party secretaries from 31 provinces, this study examines how the target assessment intervenes in pollutant emissions through a new career incentive mode in China, and the conclusions are as follows: (1) Usually, provincial officials with higher political promotion incentives are characterized as a younger, lower-position cadre during the pre-stage of term, and tend to take GDP growth goals as a priority while treating environmental targets negatively. (2) Target assessment moderates the relationship between officials’ position and SO2 emission. The use of a one-vote veto in environmental pollution assessments has led to a shift of incentive structure, as political actors prioritize environmental protection as a means of increasing their chances of promotion. (3) The moderating effect of target assessment is heterogeneous, being significant only when officials are below 60 or before the third year of their term. This study sheds light on the previously opaque motivations behind green behaviors among officials, and provides empirical support for China’s transition from a GDP-based assessment system to a green GDP-based promotion model.

Reexamining the Environmental Kuznets Curve in Chinese Cities: Does Intergovernmental Competition Matter?

Since China's central authority began enforcing the environmental target responsibility system and introduced environmental indicators to the official ranking tournament in 2007, an ecological transformation has emerged in the intergovernmental competition (IGC) among localities. Because the extant literature on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) remains unclear regarding how that ecological IGC transformation changes the EKC economy-pollution correlation, this research investigates the degree to which the transformed IGC changes the form of the EKC, and how that altered EKC varies for different pollutants (i.e., SO2 and CO2) and in different regions (i.e., the eastern, central, and western regions). The results demonstrate a consistently inverted U-shaped relationship between income and SO2 emissions in all three regions, whereas when CO2 emissions are taken as the pollution indicator, the EKC hypothesis holds only in the eastern and central cities, and a positive linear income-CO2 nexus is found in the western region. Spatial analysis reveals that whereas the IGC flattens the inverted U-shaped curves between income and SO2 emissions, it has led to a higher economic cost, corresponding to the turning point of the EKC for CO2 emissions. The findings indicate that the ecological transformation of the IGC has facilitated a positive up-down yardstick competition in the strategic interactions of sustainable development across local Chinese governments, which can lead to a kind of balance between centralization and decentralization by inspiring local officials' adaptability and activity in reducing pollutant emissions and strengthening the officials' responsiveness to performance rankings. This study elucidates the environmental impacts of IGC in China and provides an institutional explanation for the strategic interactions among local governments when they are tackling the environment-economy nexus under multitask conditions.

Exploring low-carbon pilot city policy implementation: evidence from China

ABSTRACT China has established three rounds of low-carbon pilot city initiatives. However, a gap exists between policy making and successful implementation, and the effects on greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction were found to be different among pilots. This paper considers the question of how low-carbon policies in cities can be implemented effectively and how policy combinations are adopted for GHG emissions reduction. It uses a mixed research approach, including Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and field investigation in Pilot Y (situated in the southwest China). The results show that, first, financial support and monitoring systems are necessary conditions, while political leadership is a sufficient condition. This means that the absence of financial support or monitoring systems could lead to increased GHG emissions, while the presence of political leadership always promotes the reduction of GHG emissions but may not be sufficient on its own to achieve them. Second, the target responsibility system (TRS) – a system used by higher government levels to assess the policy implementation of lower government levels – and human resource mechanisms cannot effectively lead to the promotion of GHG emissions reduction. Finally, in the absence of TRS and human resource mechanisms, environmental information disclosure (EID) was found to effectively promote low-carbon urban development by encouraging public participation. This paper reveals the complexity of the implementation of low-carbon policies in cities, identifies the link between city-level and national action, and enriches the theoretical explanation of governance and low-carbon policy implementation gaps in China. Key policy insights China’s low-carbon pilot city project is critical for reducing GHG emissions, however, the effects of the low-carbon pilot city programmes varied greatly. Financial support and monitoring systems are necessary conditions, while political leadership is a sufficient condition to achieve cities’ GHG emissions reduction goals. Local low-carbon development is limited and not put into practice at the city level in China, in part because of the absence of financial support and limited political attention. This study highlights the key conditions of organizational behaviour at the meso-level, and enriches the theoretical explanation of environmental policy implementation gaps in China.

Mandatory Environmental Regulation and Green Technology Innovation: Evidence from China

Faced with the severe situation of high energy consumption and major pollutant emissions, the Chinese government has adopted various mandatory environmental regulations (MERs) to improve the binding force of environmental protection policy implementation. In 2006, the environmental protection target responsibility system was implemented, and the energy conservation and emission reduction targets were linked to the performance assessment of government officials as a binding indicator. What is the impact of this policy on green technology innovation activities? Based on this, this paper identifies the relevant indicators of green technology innovation activities. It uses the difference-in-differences (DID) method to investigate the impact of mandatory environmental regulation on the quantity and quality of green technology innovation activities. The conclusions are as follows: (1) The implementation of MERs promoted the expansion of the number of green patent applications. (2) MERs also led to the decline of the quality and the emergence of the foaming phenomenon. (3) Enterprises with weak innovation ability are the main group causing the decline of green technology innovation quality, and they are concentrated in independent innovation and low-level pollution industries. The conclusion of this paper helps provide a theoretical basis and countermeasures for deepening the reform of the MER policy, strengthening the coordination of different environmental regulation tools, and establishing a market-oriented green technology innovation system and environmental protection science and technology policy.

Can local environmental constraints improve enterprise's green innovation quality? Evidence from Chinese-listed firms.

The target responsibility system of environmental protection is one of the vital channels to achieve a win-win situation for both economic development and environmental protection. Comprehensively investigating how local environmental target constraints drive enterprises to improve their green innovation quality is of enormous theoretical and practical significance for optimizing the implementation effect of environmental target constraints policies and boosting enterprises' green and high-quality development. We empirically examine the mechanism of the impact of the intensity of different types of local environmental target constraints on the quality of corporate green innovation and the nonlinear relationship between them through innovatively constructing indicators of local environmental target constraint intensity and utilizing the knowledge width of green patents of listed companies as a proxy variable for enterprise green innovation quality. First, the strength of indirect environmental target constraints has a significant positive effect on the quality of green innovation, but further nonlinear characteristics reveal a significant inverse U-shaped relationship between them. Second, indirect environmental target constraint intensity has an inverted U-shaped trend in increasing the intensity of environmental regulation and influencing the digitalization of enterprises, which in turn forms an inverted U-shaped relationship with the quality of green innovation. Third, indirect environmental target constraint intensity works better in areas with policies prioritizing city over province, with mayors less than 57years old, and for enterprises in technology-intensive industries.

Can the Target Responsibility System of Air Pollution Control Achieve a Win-Win Situation of Pollution Reduction and Efficiency Enhancement?

Whether the environmental target responsibility system, a typical mandatory environmental regulation, can realize the coordinated development of environmental protection and economic growth has attracted widespread attention. With the difference-in-differences (DID) method, this paper utilizes a policy, “China’s Key Cities for Air Pollution Control to Meet the Standards within the Time Limit (APCMS),” as a quasi-natural experiment to empirically examine the target responsibility system of air pollution control’s effect on both firms’ pollutant emissions and their total factor productivity (TFP). The corresponding mechanisms are also investigated. The results show: 1) The policy not only significantly decreases firms’ pollutant emissions, but also improves their TFP. The results are robust to the exclusion of the impact of other policies in the same period, propensity score matching DID (PSM-DID) test, the adoption of alternative dependent variables, and altering sample interval; 2) The dynamic analysis shows that the policy effect on reducing pollutant emissions has increased over years after a lag of 2 years; 3) The policy reduces pollutant emissions mainly through stimulating the internal innovation rather than end-pipe treatment or production cuts. 4) Capital-intensive and private firms and firms in regions with a high degree of marketization or strong environmental law enforcement are found more responsive to the environmental target responsibility system.

Tournament Style Bargaining within Boundaries: Setting Targets in China’s Cadre Evaluation System

ABSTRACT Are evaluation targets negotiable in China’s cadre evaluation system? If so, which ones and how are they negotiated? Little empirical work answers these questions, which reveals the reconciliation of political control with local governance considerations in a centralized system. This article bridges the literature on bureaucratic bargaining with that on the target responsibility system by examining intra-governmental bargaining in the performance target-setting process. In-depth interviews reveal a “tournament“ logic of target-setting bargaining. Drawing on interviews and an original dataset of personnel rules, we conceptualize and classify performance targets based on their negotiability. The findings bring to light the presence of bargaining, albeit bounded, in the top-down rational-instrumental mechanism of the target responsibility system, and the intricate relationship between merit and personal connections in political selection.

Governing energy consumption in China: a comprehensive assessment of the energy conservation target responsibility system

The governance of energy consumption in China is of environmental significance from the standpoints of preventing local air pollution and global climate change. At the heart of China’s energy governance system is the energy conservation target responsibility system (ECTRS). This article examines this important governance instrument from three key aspects. First, it explains the role of the ECTRS in China’s authoritarian yet decentralized governance system. Second, it traces the development of the ECTRS over the last decade, with a specific focus on the reforms introduced in the 13th 5-Year Plan (2016–2020), particularly the energy caps. Third, it analyzes the limitations of the ECTRS and provides a policy outlook in the context of growing domestic and international interests in energy conservation.

Study on the Construction of Assessment Mechanism Based on Eco-Environment Quality Improvement Targets

The environmental protection target responsibility system and the appraisal system is a major measure in our country’s environmental protection system. The existing ecological environmental assessment forms are diverse, various, but lack of overall planning, ecological environment quality guidance is not prominent. There are problems such as immature evaluation mechanism and incomplete design of indicator design system. This research system evaluates the assessment system in the existing environmental protection system, accelerates the overall integration, takes the environmental performance as the basic direction, takes the environmental quality goal improvement as the main line, formulates and implements a set of environmental quality target assessment index system with scientific, incentive, pertinence and maneuverability, conforms to the national conditions of our country, scientifically evaluates the effect of environmental management, and realizes the index management of environmental protection.

Rethinking China's environmental target responsibility system: Province-level convergence analysis of pollutant emission intensities in China

Mitigating emissions of both sulfur dioxide (SO2) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) has become an important task in China. The β-convergence of pollutant emissions means regions with lower pollutant emissions should have higher growth rates in pollutant emissions and then eventually catch up with those with higher. To boost economic growth maximumly under the constraint of a certain amount of pollutant emission reduction, the β-convergence of pollutant emission intensity is an important rule to rely on when allocating pollutant emission control targets at Chinese provincial level. With Chinese province-level panel data for 2000 to 2014, this research uses appropriate spatial panel models to investigate the β-convergence in emission intensities of SO2 and COD. The results show that absolute β-convergence does not exist in either emission intensity of SO2 or emission intensity of COD, whereas conditional β-convergence exists for both pollutants. Positive spatial autocorrelation exists for both emission intensities of SO2 and COD, meaning the pollutant emission intensity of one province is positively related to those of its neighboring provinces. In addition, the conditional β-convergence trend is weaker when spatial autocorrelation of pollutant emission intensities is considered. The non-existence of absolute β-convergence inspires policy makers to improve China's environmental target responsibility system because further analysis shows that provinces with higher pollutant emission intensities were not allocated with higher pollutant emission reduction targets in practice.

Do energy intensity targets matter for wind energy development? Identifying their heterogeneous effects in Chinese provinces with different wind resources

Setting energy intensity targets is an important policy instrument that addresses the shortage of energy resources and the increase of carbon emissions in China, but no study has empirically investigated the effects of energy intensity targets on renewable energy development. Based on panel data of Chinese provinces from 2001 to 2014, in this study a novel difference-in-difference design is applied to identify the causal relationship between energy intensity targets and wind energy generation capacities. The results show that mandatory energy intensity targets can drive provinces to develop renewable wind energy. The incentive effects of energy intensity targets on wind energy development are also significantly stronger for provinces with higher levels of wind resources than provinces with lower levels. These results are robust to a test set that reveals a positive moderating effect of energy intensity targets on the relationship between wind resources and wind energy generation capacities, based on alternative energy intensity target measures. The findings confirm that China’s target responsibility system can play an important role in promoting renewable energy development.

Authoritarian environmentalism and environmental policy implementation in China

Policy implementation is essential to the effectiveness of environmental governance. Focusing on two types of policies in China, law derived environmental policies and plan derived environmental policies; this research analyzed the impact of the central government's rules, regulations, and mechanism for rewards/penalties on local governments’ policy implementation. The results indicate that local governments selectively implement environmental policies. This selective implementation effort is primarily determined by the authoritarian environmentalism and the target responsibility system imposed by the central government. Local governments focus their attention on the attitude of the central government toward that policy because the scope of its reward/penalty system provides a signaling effect for different policies. The central government's regulatory oversight of policy implementation has also increased the binding power of the incentive mechanism. China's environmental law or policy implementation should make the government work paramountly.

Have China's provinces achieved their targets of energy intensity reduction? Reassessment based on nighttime lighting data

Energy intensity has been a major assessment indicator in the design of energy saving policies, and it is one of the eight binding indicators of the target responsibility system for officials’ performance evaluation in the 11th Five-Year Plan in China. However, the accuracy of measurement of energy intensity depends to a large extent on the reliability of GDP data. This paper revises the GDP growth rate with nighttime lighting data and recalculates the rate of energy intensity reduction for each province during the 11th Five-Year Plan in China. Our results show that the GDP growth rate of some provinces has been exaggerated. Further, although the energy intensity of all provinces showed a significant downward trend during the 11th Five-Year Plan, some provinces failed to meet the target of energy intensity reduction. These results suggest that when designing energy conservation policies, cross-evaluation indicators should be included to improve the effective implementation of policies.

Performance-Based or Politic-Related Decomposition of Environmental Targets: A Multilevel Analysis in China

China relies on the total pollutant emission control and environmental target responsibility system to curb environmental pollution and improve energy conversation. How the central government breaks down environmental targets among provincial governments lies at the core, but little research has been done to explore the determinants of environmental target-setting empirically. This work models the decomposition process of environmental targets by focusing on the roles of historical performance and provinces’ political status. With the method of hierarchical linear model, data on five kinds of environmental obligatory targets (energy consumption per unit GDP and other four kinds of pollutants) during China’s “12th Five-year Plan” period is used to test the hypotheses. The results show that provincial historical structural performance is negatively significantly correlated with their environmental target levels, while the effects of historical scale performance and intensity performance are not significant. Besides, provinces with higher political rankings tend to be allocated higher targets, which is in accordance with the model effect hypothesis rather than the bargaining effect hypothesis.

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

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.