Incorporating spatial effects to assess the impact of public participation in environmental governance on PM2.5 pollution reduction: evidence from China

作者：Jiang, Lei^*; Chen, Yuan; Zhou, Haifeng; He, Shixiong

来源：Air Quality Atmosphere and Health, 2022, 15(10): 1839-1854.

DOI：10.1007/s11869-022-01219-7

• Public participation in environmental governance
• PM2.5
• Emotional response sensibility index
• Convergence
• Spatial lag model
• Geographically weighted regression

The serious PM2.5 pollution in recent years has aroused environmental awareness of the public, which in turn has called for the expression of environmental interests and has led the public to participate in environmental governance. It is of great significance for evaluating the impact of public participation in environmental governance (PPEG) on PM2.5 pollution. To this end, this study took an emotional response sensibility index, computed by a machine-trained semantic analysis tool, to measure PPEG. Next, we considered the spatial spillovers of PM2.5 pollution and applied a spatial lag model to estimate the relationship between PPEG and PM2.5 pollution reduction, based on a data set of 144 Chinese cities. Since PPEG varies from a city to another, a geographically weighted regression (GWR) approach was utilized to investigate the spatial heterogeneity of the impact of PPEG on PM2.5 pollution. The main findings are the following. (1) The differences in PM2.5 concentrations across cities became narrow. (2) Ceteris paribus, PPEG has a negative impact on PM2.5 concentrations, indicating that PPEG contributes to addressing PM2.5 pollution. Besides, vehicles are a foremost contributor while an increase in urbanization level is conducive to reducing PM2.5 pollution. (3) From the GWR model results, the impact of PPEG of each city on PM2.5 pollution reduction greatly varies, implying strong spatial differences. In addition, PPEG in the North China Plain and the Pearl River Delta region exhibits higher impacts than that in the southeast and southwest. Lastly, policy recommendations for enhancing PPEG in China and improving PM2.5 pollution are given.

• 单位
  广州大学