Jurisdictional air pollution regulation in China: A tragedy of the regulatory anti-commons

• Published in: Journal of cleaner production 2019-03, Vol.212, p.1054-1061
• Main Authors: Guo, Shihong, Lu, Jiaqi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Air pollution control; Jurisdictional density; Jurisdictional management; Regulatory anti-commons
• ISSN: 0959-6526; 1879-1786
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.12.068

Air pollution imposes serious challenges to China's social welfare and public health. Existing environmental management framework, which holds county-level governments accountable for the quality of environment within their individual jurisdiction, does not cope effectively with air pollution control. Fragmentation resulted from this jurisdictional regulation model creates responsibility conflicts, causes free-rider problems, and increases cooperation costs. In short, it is inefficient and ineffective. We consider the situation to be a tragedy of the regulatory anti-commons. Using a spatial regression design, we examine the relationship between air quality and jurisdictional fragmentation. The results show that jurisdictional density – the number of regulatory units per km2 within a prefecture-level city – has a significantly negative effect on air quality, which means jurisdictional fragmentation raises the likelihood of a tragedy of the regulatory anti-commons. Our analysis both provides a new lens to the study of environmental governance in China and provides an empirical case to the anti-commons literature. •Examine the anti-commons theory in the case of air pollution regulation in China.•Fragmented environmental regulatory framework causes underuse of regulatory resources.•Jurisdictional density has a negative effect on air quality.•Take into account the spatial spillover effect of air pollution using SLM and SEM.