Abstract:

Central environmental protection inspection (CEPI) is a major institutional innovation in environmental governance that has become a key policy instrument to promote ecological civilization in 21st Century China. But not everyone agrees. The effectiveness of CEPI in improving air quality, especially its sustainability in the long run, is an open question. Based on matched city-level data, this study first evaluated the average impact of CEPI on air quality and found only short-term beneficial effects. After adopting model-based recursive partitioning tree and random forest approaches, this study observed the long-term impacts of CEPI on air quality are heterogeneous across cities. First, the long-term benefits of CEPI are more prominent in high-pollution and eastern cities. Second, the air cleaning impact of CEPI tends to be more sustainable in those cities with higher levels of economic development. Third, the moderating effects of government size and fiscal autonomy are contradictory; the former prohibits long-term effects while the latter plays a strengthening role. By revealing the contextual effects of CEPI on air quality, this paper provides a deeper understanding of the conditions that make central inspections more effective and persistent in reducing environmental pollution at the local level.

Key words: Central environmental protection inspection, City context, Air quality, Effect heterogeneity