The sword of damocles: Understanding the carbon abatement effects of top-down environmental management practices -- insights from China's campaign-style governance

Inspection, standing for top-down environmental management practices, also known as campaign-style governance, is used by central governments to lessen local environmental pollution. However, there is no causal evidence for carbon abatement. Employing staggered difference-in-differences (DiD), I fin...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of environmental management 2024-03, Vol.354, p.120306-120306, Article 120306
Main Author: Wu, Jianxian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
carbon
Carbon - analysis
Carbon mitigation
Central environmental protection inspection
China
Cities
climate change
Conservation of Natural Resources
Counterfactual analysis
Economic Development
environmental law
environmental management
Environmental Policy
Environmental Pollution
governance
Greenhouse Gases
Humans
people
politics
pollution
Regression discontinuity design
sustainable technology
Urban climate adaptation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Inspection, standing for top-down environmental management practices, also known as campaign-style governance, is used by central governments to lessen local environmental pollution. However, there is no causal evidence for carbon abatement. Employing staggered difference-in-differences (DiD), I find that inspected cities mitigate carbon intensity and carbon emissions by 3.72% and 2.34%, respectively, with economic significance. Conducting a triple difference strategy, I suggest the channels are the local people's congresses and political consultative conferences' proposals, government attention, environmental regulation, industrial structure, and green innovation. Also, the heterogeneous effects suggest that municipal party secretaries assigned to their birthplace, the older the party standing and age, and those with natural sciences majors, are more conducive to the inspection achieving carbon mitigation. An alternative DiD specification shows that the “look-back” inspection achieves sustained carbon reduction. I support the argument that top-down inspection helps achieve resilience to climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. •The top-down inspection mitigates cities' carbon intensity and carbon emission.•I identify channels in politics, government, industry, and innovation.•Local official characteristics are markedly heterogeneous.•Re-inspection also works.
ISSN:0301-4797
1095-8630
DOI:10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.120306