Improvement of regional environmental quality: Government environmental governance and public participation

Journal Pre-proof Improvement of regional environmental quality: Government environmental governance and public participation

W.U. Lihua, M.A. Tianshu, Yuanchao BIAN, L.I. Sijia, Y.I. Zhaoqiang PII:

S0048-9697(20)30775-0

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137265

Reference:

STOTEN 137265

To appear in:

Science of the Total Environment

Received date:

11 October 2019

Revised date:

9 February 2020

Accepted date:

10 February 2020

Please cite this article as: W.U. Lihua, M.A. Tianshu, Y. BIAN, et al., Improvement of regional environmental quality: Government environmental governance and public participation, Science of the Total Environment (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.scitotenv.2020.137265

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© 2018 Published by Elsevier.

Journal Pre-proof Improvement of Regional Environmental Quality: Government Environmental Governance and Public Participation Lihua WU School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China

Tianshu MA School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China

Yuanchao BIAN* School of Business, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210023, China

Sijia LI School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China

Zhaoqiang YI

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School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China

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*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]. Address: No. 1, Wenyuan Road, Qixia District, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China Tel number: +86-15651893757

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This work is supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 17AGL0005), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 2242018S10017).

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Abstract: The improvement of regional environmental quality (REQ) not only requires local governments to adopt environmental investment, legislation and law enforcement, but also requires the coordination of government environmental governance and public participation. This study analyses the impact mechanism of government environmental governance, public participation and their coordinated effect on the improvement of REQ, which is a comprehensive indicator measured by the emission of waste gas, waste water and waste solids. After empirical analyses using sample data from 30 provinces in China, the results show that, REQ has been increasingly deteriorating; the effects of government‘s environmental investment, legislation and law enforcement on REQ improvement are significantly positive, and public participation also helps to stimulate REQ. There also exists a coordinated effect between government environmental governance and public participation. Compared with citizen participation, environmental non-government organisations‘ participation has a more significant positive effect on REQ improvement. Finally, the influence of government environmental governance and public participation on REQ has significant spatial heterogeneity. The conclusions above can provide inspiration for Chinese government to improve the environmental governance system, which is good for the improvement of REQ. Keywords: government environmental governance; public participation; citizen participation; regional environmental quality

1. Introduction Since the reform and opening-up and alongside rapid economic growth, China‘s environmental pollution is becoming increasingly troubling and poses a serious threat to people‘s

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health (Du et al., 2019; Li et al., 2017; Liao, 2018). According to the China Ecological Environment Bulletin in 2017 issued by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the air pollution index in 70.7% of cities in China have exceeded the standard; the groundwater quality in 66.9% of the monitoring stations is poor or very poor. To improve regional environment quality (REQ), the Chinese government has put forward a series of specific objectives for environmental governance and has taken various measures to carry out them in recent years. For example, since 2001, the Chinese government has proposed quantitative indicators for the reduction of the emission of major pollutants (i.e. waste gas, waste water and solid waste). The central government has adopted a target responsible system to encourage local governments to carry out environmental governance, and broke down environmental governance objectives and authorised the Ministry of Environmental Protection to sign an environmental target responsibility letter with the local governments, to achieve environmental governance targets and improve REQ (Liang and Langbein, 2015; Wang et al., 2018). From the experience in developed countries such as the United States and European Union, a scientific environmental governance system not only includes the government, but also the social public (Kostka and Mol, 2013; Peel, 2001). In China, public participation has also recently become an emerging subject for environmental governance, more and more citizens and organisations have begun to pay attention to environmental protection. The Chinese government has also protected the legitimate environmental rights of the public by setting up environmental protection hotlines and mailboxes for environmental complaints. To improve citizen satisfaction, the Chinese government is also gradually changing the traditional government-led regulatory environmental governance mode and proposing an environmental governance system that requires the government and the public to work together to improve REQ. The main purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of government environmental governance and public participation on the improvement of REQ, which is a comprehensive indicator and measured by the emission amount of waste gas, waste water and waste solid with Entropy Weight Method, by investigating China‘s environmental governance system. We focus on the impact mechanism and effect of different governance and public participation models on the improvement of REQ, and analyse the coordinated effect of government environmental governance and public participation. This study also tries to answer the following questions: what is the state of China‘s REQ? How does government environmental governance and public participation improve REQ? Is there a coordinated effect between government environmental governance and public participation? This study thus attempts to clarify the impact mechanism of government environmental governance and public participation in REQ improvement and conduct empirical analysis to verify these effects using the data from China. Compared with previous studies, our research has three novel aspects: the first is dividing government environmental governance into three elements -- environmental investment, environmental legislation and environmental law enforcement -- according to the norms of the Chinese government‘s environmental governance. This is not only helpful to understand the behaviour of Chinese government‘s environmental governance more comprehensively, but also highlights areas for policy optimisation. The second is the division of public participation into citizen participation and environmental non-government organization (ENGO) participation. As the new subjects of China‘s environmental governance system, citizens and ENGOs have different

Journal Pre-proof behaviours and roles when participating in environmental governance. The third is the analysis of the coordinated effect of government environmental governance and public participation. In the environmental governance system, the role of local government and public participation depends on their mutual coordination jointly to promote the improvement of REQ. It is also helpful to enrich the existing research literature and provide more solutions to improve REQ in China. The remainder of this paper is arranged as follows. Section 2 is the literature review; Section 3 proposes the research hypotheses; Section 4 introduces the measurement and results for REQ; Section 5 presents the empirical model, data source and variables; Section 6 reports and discusses the empirical results; and Section 7 contains the conclusions and implications. 2. Literature Review

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Historically, the regional environmental condition is one of the key factors affecting human survival and development. It is essential to assess REQ because it provides guidance for sustainable management in future development. Theoretically, REQ is a basic attribute of the objective existence of the environmental system, and the external characteristics of this basic attribute can be described by qualitative and quantitative methods. The previous literature has identified several indicators for measuring REQ, such as air and water quality (Liu et al., 2018), annual rate of deforestation, dissolved oxygen in rivers, urban waste and per capita carbon emissions (Shafik and Bandyopadhyay, 1992). Although these specific environmental indicators can directly measure the practical environmental problems in a certain area, they cannot fully reflect the overall REQ situation. Due to the complexity and diversity of environmental pollution, it necessary to build an REQ index containing a variety of pollutants, to measure the regional environmental situation comprehensively. In addition to assessing REQ, the key factors affecting it have always been hot issues of scholarly discussion. Comprehensively, previous research has mainly focused on economic and institutional factors. We will also review them on these two aspects. First, in terms of economic factors, previous research has mainly focused on economic growth and foreign trade. On the one hand, economic factors have, historically, been an important cause of environmental pollution since the industrial revolution. Grossman and Krueger (1991) first verified the relationship between per capita income levels and environmental quality and found that there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental quality. Panayotou (1997) defined the above-mentioned non-linear relationship between per capita income and environmental quality as the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), referring to the findings of Kuznets in 1955. Research on the EKC then entered a peak period, and many meaningful debates were launched. Among them, some scholars -- such as Bimonte and Stabile (2017), Ulucak and Bilgili (2018) -- believe that the EKC does exist, but studies such as those by Govindaraju and Tang (2013) have shown that there is no significant inverted U-shaped relationship between per capita income and environmental pollution, which means the EKC not exist as a significant relationship. On the other hand, since the 1990s, the analysis of environmental pollution has gradually expanded to include transboundary pollution under open market conditions. Grossman and Kreuger (1991) concluded that the long-term consequences of trade liberalisation generally improve the environmental quality of developing countries. Copeland and Taylor (1994) believed that, in the context of trade liberalisation and economic integration, pollution-intensive industries

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will move from developed countries with higher environmental costs to developing countries or less developed countries with lower environmental costs, which will intensify the environmental pollution in the developing countries and form a ‗pollution haven‘ effect. Some studies have found that international trade (import/export trade) can help improve environmental quality of developing countries, thereby improving global environmental quality (Antweiler et al., 2001; Daly, 1993; Erdogan, 2014). Other studies shown that, for developing countries, international trade has worsened their environmental quality. Ang (2009) and Dean et al. (2005) concluded that developing countries, such as China, have lower environmental standards in global trade, which will aggravate local environmental pollution and make such countries into pollution havens for pollution-intensive industries in developed countries. The research by Cai et al. (2018) has reached a similar consistent conclusion about the ‗pollution haven‘ effect. Second, in terms of government environmental governance, to improve REQ successfully, not only economic factors, but also policymakers or governmental decision-makers also provide important parameters. Brunner and Cohen (2003) believed that government environmental regulation could bring about an ‗innovation compensation effect‘, which would attract more foreign production of cleaner technology to promote environmental quality. In terms of China‘s environmental governance system, the central government is the leader in promoting environmental protection (Beeson, 2010; Marquis and Cuili, 2014), while local governments at different levels are the core players in achieving environmental protection targets (Wang et al., 2018). The Environmental Protection Law clearly stipulates that local governments are responsible for the environmental quality of their respective administrative regions. Such factors as the power, behaviour, and governance experience of local government officials ultimately influence the local economy and REQ (Zhang and Gao, 2007). Zhu and Lu (2017) also found that government expenditure on environmental protection has a significant pollution control effect based on data from the provinces and industries in China. While promoting environmental governance, the power of the public participation should not be ignored. Public participation is vital for flexibility in dealing with environmental conflicts (Cowan, 2003; Johnson, 2010; McAvoy, 1999), which can make up the decision-makers‘ knowledge and competence and cause them to recognise public concerns and demands (Fung, 2006). The experience of developed countries shows that the initial motive force of environmental governance comes from the public. Tiebout (1956) believed that the public has the right of ‗voting with feet‘ and choosing public services that are in line with its preferences. Because the loss of residents may have a negative impact on economic development, it will encourage governments to provide high environmental quality. Moloney et al. (2010) considered ENGOs as a part of public participation and believed that ENGOs play an active role in promoting REQ and changing individual behaviours and lifestyles. Through Indonesian case studies, Pargal et al. (1997) found that actions taken by citizens and ENGOs could improve environmental quality. This paper and Wu et al. (2018) both analyze the impact on regional environmental quality from the aspects of government governance and public participation, but the latter just focused on characterizing government environmental governance from the implementation of local government environmental responsibility goals and neglected its coordinated effect with public participation. At last, Yu et al. (2015) believed that public demands are conducive to a limited reduction of energy consumption and the improvement of environmental governance efficiency. In the previous literature, scholars have conducted in-depth analyses of the definition of REQ

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and the key factors affecting its improvement, and these have been an important reference for this study. Unfortunately, there are still some shortcomings in prior research. First, although some previous studies focused on the impact of government environmental governance (such as environmental legislation, environmental law enforcement, environmental investment) on REQ, most only examined one of them, and do not put them together for a comparative study. This is bound to be detrimental to a comprehensive unveiling of the role of government in China‘s environmental governance system. Second, although previous studies recognised that public participation is an important force in promoting REQ improvement (Yang et al., 2018), they ignored the differences in the impact of different types of public participation on REQ improvement. In fact, the participation methods and results are different for citizen participation and ENGO participation. Third, previous studies have not conducted in-depth analysis of the coordinated effect of government environmental governance and public participation, nor have they investigated the heterogeneity of coordinated effect between such government environmental governance and different methods of public participation. This reduces the likelihood of developing a clearer understanding of the relationship between government environmental governance and public participation in the process of environmental governance.

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3. Research Hypothesis

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Regardless of the reality or the national strategic layout, the government still plays a tremendous role in environmental governance. Faced with increasingly serious environmental pollution problems, China‘s central government has clarified the environmental protection responsibilities of local governments by laws and regulations and formulated quantitative targets for energy conservation and emission reduction to improve environmental quality (Wu et al., 2018). Local governments have many ways to carry out environmental governance, such as by enacting environmental laws and regulations, strengthening law enforcement and increasing investment. From the point of view of China‘s current environmental protection practices, the implementation of local government‘s environmental governance responsibilities is mainly achieved through environmental legislation, environmental law enforcement and environmental investment (Li, 2017). Of these, environmental investment is an especially effective means of improving REQ, which reflects the government‘s preference for the environment and, to some extent, the government‘s attention to environmental governance. Specifically, environmental governance is a long-term systematic project, which requires stable and sustained financial support. If on views REQ as a product, then it is a public product feature that has the characteristics of non-exclusiveness and non-competitiveness. Taking the government as the supply body for the environmental ‗product‘ has become the consensus and basic responsibility of all countries in the world, including China. According to the principle of space benefit, the central government is responsible for the investment of those cross-regional beneficiaries and major or national environmental protection issues, such as air pollution control in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei (Jing-Jin-Ji areas). The investment of those within-area beneficiaries and regional environmental protection issues – such as water pollution governance and urban environmental infrastructure construction – are assumed by local governments. In China‘s vertical political system, the central government encourages local governments to increase investment in environmental protection

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through the ‗pressure transmission mechanism‘ (Liao and Shi, 2018). According to the China Statistical Yearbook, the environmental protection expenditure of local governments in China has increased from 96.123 billion Yuan in 2007 to 443.933 billion Yuan in 2016, with an average annual growth rate of 18.53%, exceeding the growth rate of total fiscal expenditure and GDP in the same period. The government‘s environmental investment increases the scale of funds for environmental pollution treatment, which may improve the effect of environmental treatment and REQ. With the improvement of laws and regulations in China, the local government departments for enforcement have been steadily strengthened, and a special environmental inspection system combining centralised law enforcement inspection with daily supervision has gradually formed. Specifically, the centralized law enforcement inspection is carried out by the higher-level environmental protection department in routine forms (e.g. checking the content of letters and visits about environmental affairs, collecting media reports) and unconventional forms (e.g. undercover inspections, unexpected inspection, online review, etc.), to comprehensively and centrally inspect problems in the enforcement of local government environmental protection departments. The role of centralized law enforcement inspections is to prevent abuse of law enforcement powers and ensure fair law enforcement. While daily supervision and enforcement are performed by local governments in accordance with relevant laws, to regularly monitor and supervise the administrative law enforcement actions of its subordinate environmental protection departments, and ensure that environmental protection laws and regulations are effectively implemented. The centralized law enforcement inspections require local environmental protection departments to promptly rectify deficiencies in law enforcement, whose combination with daily supervision and enforcement can effectively solve problems that are not timely or difficult to deal with in daily supervision and enforcement, and is the last straw in daily supervision and enforcement to discover and resolve related problems. The ability of environmental law enforcement has thus been continuously improved. Recently, the Chinese central government passed the Environmental Protection Law, and the provincial local governments have adopted local environmental laws and regulations, such as the Environmental Protection Regulations of Shandong and the Environmental Protection Regulations of Jiangsu, to clarify their power and the responsibility of environmental governance. Bao et al. (2013) found that the role of environmental legislation must be supported by strong law enforcement, otherwise it may lead to the deterioration of environmental protection. Their research conclusions emphasised the importance of investigation into law breaking for environmental governance. The government‘s environmental legislation and environmental law enforcement help to clarify the rights and obligations of environmental subjects (e.g. government, enterprises, the public), regulate their behaviour, improve the emission cost of environmental pollution, punish those behaviours that damage REQ, and reward those behaviours that improve REQ. We therefore propose the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 1: Environmental investment, environmental legislation and environmental law enforcement in government environmental governance have a positive impact on the improvement of REQ. REQ is not only directly related to everyone‘s quality of life, health and safety, but also affects property value. The public is not only the victim of environmental pollution, but also the responsible subject of environmental problems. On the one hand, for the public, establishing

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environmental protection awareness and protecting the environment within the scope of their ability are important and basic channels for environmental governance. On the other hand, public interest is the starting point and destination of environmental governance, and public participation in environmental governance can more effectively solve environmental problems and improve public satisfaction. Public participation can supplement information, restrict power, solve the problem of information and power asymmetry between governments and enterprises and play a linking role in the environmental governance system. The main bodies of public participation include citizen and ENGO (Mauerhofer and Volker, 2016). There are two methods for public participation in environmental governance: one is promoting environmental quality improvement by lobbying environmental policymakers or directly participating in the formulation of environmental policies and the other is persuading the government, enterprises and the public to adopt a more environmentally friendly way of life and production to directly improve environmental quality (Li et al., 2018) , which are the key factors affecting the REQ. Public participation affects environmental quality improvement indirectly or directly by influencing the government‘s environmental governance behaviour. The public mainly influences regional environmental governance by participating actively in environmental public affairs and applying pressure on and motivating on local officials. Public participation is often regarded as a democratic solution to environmental problems that can improve the quality of government environmental decision-making and the level of environmental governance (Carvalho et al., 2016). As a third-party force outside of the government and enterprises, public participation can supplement information and restrain authority, which is conducive to solving regulatory problems caused by information asymmetry between the government and enterprises (Gera, 2016). We therefore propose the following research hypothesis: Hypothesis 2: Public participation is conducive to the improvement of REQ. The relationship between public participation and governmental policy instruments is complementary (Fu and Geng, 2019; Morgan, 2012). Public participation in environmental protection is motivated by self-interest, because environmental pollution and destruction will reduce people‘s quality of life and threaten their health and safety. The public can appeal directly to local governments to protect the environment, which can also reduce the collusion between local governments and enterprises to relax environmental supervision, and can encourage local governments to take measures to reduce environmental pollution. China has a vast territory, so public participation can provide effective information for regulators and reduce the cost of supervision. The people-oriented concept also encourages local governments to respond positively to the public‘s environmental demands in their jurisdictions and make greater efforts in terms of environmental protection. Public participation has also broken China‘s vertical environmental governance mode and promoted the formation of a national multi-governance system (Fu and Geng, 2019). Both direct interaction between the public and local government and the direct transmission of public opinions from the superior government to the local government by influencing the superior government can exert pressure on the local government. The public can interact directly with local governments to convey their environmental demands. The public can also express its dissatisfaction or opinions with local government environmental governance by interacting with the superior government. The superior government supervises and inspects the local government‘s

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environment governance behaviour through performance evaluation and incentive mechanisms, to encourage the strengthening of environmental governance by the local governments. We therefore put forward the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 3: Public participation and government environmental governance have coordinated effects on REQ improvement. As mentioned above, public participation in environmental governance in China mainly includes ENGO participation and citizen participation. As an important body of public participation, ENGO started relatively late in China. According to the web of public service platform for social organizations in China, the first local environmental social organization, Friends of Nature, was established in China 1994. According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection‘s Guiding Opinions on Cultivating the Orderly Development of Environmental Social Organisations, ENGO include, among other types of organisations, environmental protection associations, environmental protection foundations and environmental protection private non-enterprise units. In fact, as far as the comparison between ENGO participation and citizen participation is concerned, the former has a greater impact on the results of local government environmental governance. On the one hand, compared with individuals, ENGO have a wide horizontal network system that can gather the environmental demands of the public, transmit them to different levels of government and recommend adjustments to environmental policies. ENGO can gather professional forces for environmental protection and organise various experts to participate in research on and development of environmental affairs to make environmental governance behaviour more rational. On the other hand, ENGO have more energy to convey the public‘s demand and promote the government to propose improvement programs. We therefore propose the fourth hypothesis of this study: Hypothesis 4: Compared with citizen participation, the coordinative effect of ENGOs and government environmental governance is more significant. We summarise the above research hypotheses into an analytical framework as shown in Figure1. Based on the framework of the environmental governance system, this study analyses the impact of government environmental governance and public participation on REQ: first, we investigate the impact of government environmental governance on REQ from environmental investment, environmental legislation and environmental law enforcement (Hypothesis 1); second, we analyse the impact of public participation (citizen and ENGO participation) on REQ (Hypothesis 2); third, we also inspect the influence of the coordinated effect of government environmental governance and public participation on REQ (Hypothesis 3), and compare the differences of coordinated effect between government environmental governance and different types of public participation (Hypothesis 4).

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Figure 1. Analysis framework

4.Measurement and Analysis of Environmental Quality

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4.1 Measurement Method

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We calculated the REQ of 30 provinces in China from 2001 to 2015. In this study, we measured REQ by regional environmental scores (Environment) which calculated by the Entropy Weight Method. In this paper, the ―entropy‖ indicates the degree of chaos of an event or variable, which is similar to the meaning of entropy in thermodynamics. Therefore, building on the rationale of entropy in thermodynamics, the Entropy Weight Method can be used to measure the weight of an index or a variable based on its degree of chaos, to quantify the information of them. The calculating indexes here included total industrial waste gas emission, total industrial SO2 emission, total industrial smoke and dust emission, total industrial waste water emission and total industrial solid waste emission (Table 1 reports the index above in detail). The higher the environmental pollution score, the higher the REQ. Table 1 Environmental pollution score index

Overall level

Goal level

Index level

billion

negative 3

gas emission

standards m

total industrial SO2

10000 tons

negative

10000 tons

negative

10000 tons

negative

10000 tons

negative

emission

environmental

total industrial smoke

pollution score

and dust emission waste water

Indicator attributes

total industrial waste

waste gas

Unit

total industrial waste water emission

waste solid

total industrial solid waste emission

Note: waste water mainly includes industrial waste water, such as chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonia nitrogen; solid waste includes solid particles, garbage, slag, sludge, waste product and so on.

Journal Pre-proof Supposing that 𝑥𝜃𝑖𝑗 is the jth index of province ith in the θth year (θ=1, 2, …, p; i=1, 2, …, n; j=1, 2, …, m), the Entropy Weight Method includes the following steps: (1) Standardisation of indicators: for positive indicators, the method is:

x ' ij  x ij / xmax

(1)

and for the negative indicators, the method is:

x ' ij  xmax / x ij

(2)

(2) Calculating the weights of the jth index of province ith in the θth year:

y ij  x ' ij /  i x ' ij

(3)

(3) Calculating the entropy value of the jth index:

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e j  k  i yij ln(y ij )

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and

k  1/ ln(m)

(4)

(5)

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(4) Calculating the information redundancy of the j index:

gi  1  e j

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(5) Calculating the weights of the jth index:

(6)

wj  g j /  j g j

(7)

4.2 Result Analysis

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(6) Calculating the environmental pollution score:

H i   j ( w j x ' ij )

(8)

0.1600 0.1400 0.1200

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Based on the above method, we assessed the REQ of China‘s 30 provinces from 2001 to 2015 as described by Figure 2 and Figure 3.

0.1000 0.0800 0.0600 0.0400 0.0200 0.0000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 National

Eastern

Middle

Western

Figure 2 REQ

trends in China, 2001-2015 Note: Due to lack of data sources, the study sample excludes Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. Among the remaining 30 provincial administrative regions, the Eastern region includes Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong, Guangdong and Hainan; the Middle region includes Shanxi, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hubei and Hunan; and the

Journal Pre-proof Western region includes Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Guangxi and Inner

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Mongolia.

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Figure 3 Spatial distribution of REQ in China

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As shown in Figure 2, the environmental pollution scores in China show a downward trend, and REQ deteriorated during the investigation period, which is valid at least after the adoption of total industrial waste gas, total industrial SO2, total industrial smoke and dust, total industrial waste water and total industrial solid waste emissions as indicators. The REQ in the Eastern, Middle and Western regions shows a relatively consistent trend, but there is a big gap among them. Specifically, the REQ in the Eastern region is the highest, while that in the Middle is the lowest. During the period 2001-2015, the Western region‘s REQ dropped from 0.1167 to 0.0416, which was 1.37 times as much as in the Eastern region and three times that of the Middle region. Figure 3 describes the spatial distribution of REQ. The value for Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai is relatively high. Although these provinces have gathered many heavy and high-pollution industries, the economic development quality and the environmental quality are also higher. An interesting phenomenon shown in 2001, 2007 and 2015 in Figure 3 is that the environmental pollution scores for many Middle and Western provinces are gradually decreasing, which indicates that the REQ in these areas has deteriorated, which is consistent with Figure 2. 5.Model, Data and Variables 5.1 Model Specification To further investigate the impact of government environmental governance and public participation on REQ, we constructed the Panel Econometric Model as shown in Equation (9):

Journal Pre-proof Environmentit     Governmentit   Publicit   j  Controls jit  i  t   it

(9)

where i and t denote the number of cross sections and the number of periods; Environment denotes the REQ, measured by the environmental pollution score as shown in Part 3;  is a constant term; Government and Public are the core independent variables, which denote the government environmental governance and public participation, respectively,  and  are their respective estimation coefficients; Controls denotes a series of control variables, where  is

 i and t denote the unobservable individual fixed effects and time fixed effects respectively; and  it is a stochastic disturbance term that changes with the individual the estimation coefficient;

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and time. Because government environmental governance in this study includes three aspects – environmental investment (Investment), environmental legislation (Legislation) and environmental

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law enforcement (Enforcement) – Equation (9) can be extended to Equation (10) ~ (12):

Environmentit    1 Investmentit   Publicit   j  Controls jit

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 i  t   it

Environmentit     2 Legislationit   Publicit   j  Controls jit

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 i  t   it

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Environmentit    3 Enforcementit   Publicit   j  Controls jit  i  t   it

(10)

(11)

(12)

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In Equations (10) though (12),  1 ,  2 and  3 denote the effects of environmental investment, environmental legislation and environmental law enforcement on REQ, while the remaining variables are consistent with Equation (9).

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To further verify the coordinated effect between government environmental governance and public participation in the improvement of the REQ, we introduce the interaction terms for government environmental governance and public participation in Equations (10) - (12), and they can be expanded to:

Environmentit    1 Investmentit   Publicit  1 Investmentit  Publicit   j  Controls jit  i  t   it

Environmentit     2 Legislationit   Publicit  2 Legislationit  Publicit   j  Controls jit  i  t   it

Environmentit    3 Enforcementit   Publicit  3 Enforcementit  Publicit   j  Controls jit  i  t   it

In Equations (13) - (15),

(13)

(14)

(15)

1 ,  2 and 3 denote the impact of the coordinated effect

between government environmental governance and public participation on the REQ, while the remaining variables are consistent with Equation (9). 5.2 Variable Selection and Data Description

Journal Pre-proof 5.2.1Government environmental governance

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To cover government environmental governance as comprehensively as possible, this study chooses environmental investment, environmental legislation and environmental law enforcement as representative for government environmental governance. These can be defined and measured as follows: (1) Environmental investment (Investment) indicates the degree of the government‘s investment scale in environmental governance. The total investment in environmental governance is selected as the index of environmental investment in this study. (2) Environmental legislation (Legislation), in this study, is measured by the number of rules and regulations on environmental pollution governance promulgated by local governments. Considering the lag and long-term features of rules and regulations, we take 2001 as the baseline period and accumulate the number of rules and regulations year by year. (3) Environmental law enforcement (Enforcement), in this study, is measured by the proxy indicator of the law enforcement intensity, which is equal to the number of environmental administrative penalty cases divided by the number of units paying pollution fees.

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5.2.2Public Participation

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In this study, we mainly focus on two types of public participation: citizen participation (Personal) and ENGO participation (Organisation). As far as the situation of public participation in environmental governance in China is concerned, citizen participation mainly manifests in the behaviour of writing petition letters about environmental pollution, while ENGO participation is shown in the development of ENGOs. We therefore continue to use the Entropy Weight Method to measure public governance according to the citizen participation and ENGO participation. Considering the availability of data, this study chooses the number of petition letters about environmental pollution as the proxy indicator of citizen participation and uses the number of ecological environmental social organisations to measure the ENGO participation. According to China‘s current statistics, reporting of statistics on ecological environmental social organisations began in 2007. In the following empirical analysis, we therefore use the data from 2001-2015 in the model of citizen participation and data from 2007-2015 in the model of ENGO participation and the model of public participation as a whole. Although the different observation periods of the samples may interfere with our estimation results, this sub-optimal choice is the result of the currently available data. 5.2.3Control Variables To control for other factors affecting REQ, the following control variables are selected in this study: (1) Regional economic development (Economy). Because the higher the economic development level, the higher the government‘s and public‘s attention to REQ. This study chooses per capita GDP to measure the regional economic development, and uses CPI to convert it into constant price per capita GDP with 2001 as the baseline year. (2) Population scale (Population), for which we use the permanent population at the end of the year in each province as the proxy indicator in this study. (3) Foreign investment (FDI) is significant because of the traditional hypothesis of pollution haven, which suggests that foreign investment is an important factor

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affecting REQ. This study uses the total investment of foreign-funded enterprises to measure the foreign investment, and the real exchange rate of RMB to US dollars in each year is used to convert it into RMB units. (4) Fiscal pressure (Fiscal) should be considered because the study of China‘s environmental problems cannot be separated from fiscal decentralization, which is an important factor affecting regional environmental governance and REQ. We use (fiscal expenditure/fiscal revenue) to measure the fiscal pressure on local governments. (5) Industrial structure (Industry) is considered in this study because the high pollution and high energy consumption in secondary industries are important sources of environmental pollution in China, and this study uses the proportion of secondary industries in GDP as the proxy indicator of industrial structure. (6) Science and technological development (Technology) can promote the green upgrading of production technology and improve REQ, and we use the fiscal expenditure on science and technology to measure this factor. (7) Energy consumption structure (Energy) is measured using the proportion of coal consumption to total energy consumption for the province as the proxy indicator of energy consumption. (8) Traffic congestion (Traffic) is measured as the proportion of private car ownership to highway mileage, which reflects the impact of vehicle exhaust on environmental quality. (9) Urbanisation level (Urbanisation) is assessed by the proportion of non-agricultural population in the total population of the province. The data used in this study are from the China Environmental Yearbook, China Statistical Yearbook, China Population and Employment Statistics Yearbook, China Civil Affairs Statistics Yearbook and the Magic Weapon of Peking University. And Table 2 reports the results of the descriptive statistics. Table 2 Results of Descriptive Statistics

Environment

450

0.068

Investment

450

84.300

Legislation

450

297.269

Enforcement

450

Individual

450

Public Economy Population FDI

Std. Error

Minimum

0.113

0.009

0.906

79.585

1.982

444.354

339.492

Maximum

1825.000

4.165

4.026

0.229

28.017

2021.507

1727.340

2.000

9896.000

1.000

270

221.230

204.490

10.000

1022.000

270

0.219

0.155

0.013

0.794

450

23199.350

16440.290

3000.000

82755.070

450

4378.191

2638.120

523.000

10849.000

450

4384.932

6579.763

52.827

34487.610

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Social

Mean

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na

Variables

Fiscal

450

2.140

0.938

0.908

6.745

Industrial

450

0.462

0.077

0.197

0.590

Technology

450

0.015

0.012

0.003

0.072

Energy

450

1.575

1.363

0.065

10.133

Traffic

450

20.817

32.010

1.034

200.607

Urbanization

450

0.368

0.164

0.149

0.906

Note: the variables above are all processed logarithmically in the regression next, and the proportional variables are processed by log (1+original value).

6.Results and Discussion 6.1 Results of Benchmark Regression

Journal Pre-proof This study uses Stata software to estimate the Panel Econometric Model in Equations (9), (10), (11) and (12), and the estimated results of the impacts of government environmental governance and public participation on REQ are reported in Table 3. Table 3 Results of Benchmark Model Investment

Investment

0.351

(2) ***

(11.26)

0.351

Enforcement

(3)

(4)

0.017***

0.018***

(3.26)

(3.52)

Enforcement

0.002

**

0.068

(1.99)

Energy

Urban

Constant

(2.18)

-0.030**

(-7.52)

(-7.39)

(-1.71)

(-2.59)

(-2.29)

(-2.42)

-0.002

**

-0.181

***

-0.085

(-7.48) 0.023

***

-0.002

**

(-2.12) -0.180

***

(-2.76)

(-2.74)

0.806***

0.805***

(3.32) -0.032

-0.025

***

-0.080

**

(-2.22)

(-2.09)

**

**

0.015

(4.38)

**

(2.37) -0.032

**

0.016

(-1.98)

-0.239

-0.101

-p

0.023

***

-0.270

***

re

-0.269

***

ro

-0.028**

(-1.48) Traffic

0.060**

(2.48)

(2.60)

-0.028

***

*

(-1.78)

-0.253

***

***

(-2.67)

0.021

***

(3.60)

-0.098*** (-2.61) 0.023*** (3.86)

*

-0.026*

(-1.84)

(-1.65)

-0.029

-0.202

***

-0.212***

(-3.20)

(-3.40)

(-2.71)

(-2.86)

1.136***

1.147***

1.001***

1.009***

(3.31)

(4.16)

(4.23)

(3.60)

(3.65)

-0.032

-0.011

-0.008

0.0002

0.003

(-0.76)

(-0.52)

(0.01)

(0.22)

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Technology

(3.09)

-0.012***

(-2.11) Industry

(3.03)

-0.009*

(4.43) Fiscal

0.014***

-0.187***

(-7.53) FDI

***

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Population

0.014***

-0.186***

na

Economy

(6)

(10.99)

Legislation

Public

(5)

***

of

(1)

Legislation

(-1.47)

-0.025

***

-0.021

**

-0.018

**

-0.018

**

-0.015*

(-3.25)

(-3.22)

(-2.45)

(-2.06)

(-2.11)

(-1.75)

-0.005

-0.005

-0.045

-0.043

-0.031

-0.029

(-0.10)

(-0.10)

(-0.72)

2.762

***

2.569

***

0.722

(-0.71)

(-0.50)

(-0.47)

*

0.647

0.630

0.574

(6.82)

(6.44)

(1.70)

(1.53)

(1.46)

(1.33)

Obs.

450

450

450

450

450

450

Year

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

Province

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

R-sq within

0.5142

0.5142

0.3754

0.3850

0.3732

0.3806

Note: ***, ** and * denote a significance level of 1%, 5% and 10%, respectively; t statistics are reported in parentheses.

When choosing a suitable regression model for our panel data, the results of the Hausman test supports the need for a fixed effect model to estimate of Equations (10) through (12). Compared with the random effect model, the fixed effect model, which assumes that the explanatory variables are correlated with the stochastic error terms, is more realistic.

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According to the results shown in columns (1) and (2) of Table 3, the coefficients of the government‘s environmental investment (Investment) are significantly positive at 1%, which show that investment in environmental governance by local government significantly improved REQ. The results in columns (3) and (4) show that the coefficients of governments‘ environmental legislation (Legislation) are also significantly positive at 1%, indicating that local governments‘ legislation on environmental governance can promote the improvement of REQ. Similarly, the results in columns (5) and (6) also show that the coefficients of local government‘s environmental law enforcement (Enforcement) are significantly positive at 1%, which means that the law enforcement in environmental governance can also help to improve REQ. To sum up, the local government‘s environmental governance increased the financial support, strengthened the construction of laws and regulations and formed certain constraints on environmental pollution behaviour that can help to improve REQ. The conclusions above are consistent with Hypothesis 1. The results reported in columns (2), (4) and (6) of Table 3 show that the coefficients of public participation (Public) affecting REQ are also significantly positive, which indicates that public participation in environmental governance can improve REQ, and this is consistent with Hypothesis 2. Specially, the public as the victim of pollution and the responsible subject for environmental governance has the original momentum to participate in environmental governance and make the solution of environmental problem more effective. The results of the control variables are very robust in columns (1) - (6) of Table 3. Among them, the effect of regional economic development (Economy) on REQ is significantly negative, indicating that the higher the level of economic development, the lower the REQ. The coefficient of population size (Population) is also significantly negative, because the population agglomeration may lead to more industrial production activities and more environmental pollution and thus lower REQ. However, foreign investment (FDI) plays a positive role in improving REQ. Many enterprises receiving foreign investment are high-tech enterprises, and their pollution emissions are lower, which indicates that this study rejects the hypothesis that China was a pollution haven during the investigation period. The impact of science and technological development (Technology) on REQ is significantly positive - that is, technological innovation helps to improve the application of cleaner production technology and the improvement of REQ. The impact of fiscal pressure (Fiscal) is significantly negative. Fiscal pressure often leads local governments to support traditional enterprises with high pollution and high energy consumption, because these enterprises have always been an important source of local government tax revenue. There is also a negative relationship between industrial structure (Industry) and REQ. The secondary industry-dominated industrial structure yields more environmental pollution. The impact of traffic congestion (Traffic) on REQ is significantly negative, which indicates that in those areas with more traffic congestion, automobile exhaust emissions are higher and REQ is lower. Finally, the impacts of energy consumption structure (Energy) and urbanisation level (Urbanisation) on REQ is not significant. 6.2 Coordinated Effect of Government environmental governance and Public Participation The estimated results of the previous benchmark regression model have shown that both government environmental governance and public participation are important aspects to improve REQ. As mentioned in the research hypotheses, there is coordinated effect between government

Journal Pre-proof environmental governance and public participation in the process of regional environmental governance and the improvement of REQ. We will therefore also examine this question and use Stata software to estimate the model in Equations (13), (14) and (15). The results are reported in Table 4. Table 4 Results of Coordinated Effect

Investment

Investment

Legislation

(1)

(2)

0.276

Enforcement (3)

***

(7.95) 0.003*(1.66)

Legislation

0.040***(8.60)

Enforcement 0.423***(4.64)

Investment× Public

0.386*** (9.81)

0.253***(8.27)

0.108***(4.84) 0.080*** (10.30)

ro

Legislation× Public

of

Public

0.199*** (10.39)

Economy

-0.144***(-5.54)

0.031*(1.75)

0.043**(2.29)

Population

-0.153***(-3.59)

0.084**(2.24)

0.049(1.35)

FDI

***

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-p

Enforcement× Public

(3.63)

0.025*** (4.72)

-0.028**(-1.97)

-0.027*(-1.93)

0.024

(4.71)

0.020

***

-0.006(-0.40)

Industry

-0.204***(-3.17)

-0.288***(-4.34)

-0.247*** (-3.74)

Technology

0.476*(1.93)

0.389(1.54)

0.280(1.10)

Energy

-0.037

***

Traffic

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Fiscal

-0.034 (-2.59)

-0.009(-0.67)

-0.022***(-2.88)

-0.020*** (-2.62)

-0.018**(-2.31)

Urban

-0.046(-0.85)

-0.093*(-1.70)

-0.037(-0.68)

Constant

***

*

-0.696 (-1.75)

-0.631(-1.58)

450

450

450

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

0.5414

0.5154

0.5139

Year Province R-sq within

1.686

(3.93)

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Obs.

na

(-2.88)

**

Note: ***, ** and * denote a significance level of 1%, 5% and 10%, respectively; t statistics are reported in parentheses.

From the results shown in column (1) of Table 4, we can see that environmental investment and public participation still have a significant role in promoting REQ, and the interaction coefficient between environmental investment and public participation is also significantly positive, indicating that there is a coordinated effect between government environmental investment and public participation on the improvement of REQ. The results shown in column (2) show that the impacts of government environmental legislation and public participation on REQ are also significantly positive, and the interaction coefficient between them is also significantly positive at 1%, which indicates that the coordinated effect exists. Finally, we can see that government environmental law enforcement and public participation can significantly promote REQ improvement from the results shown in column (3), and the interaction coefficient between them is significantly positive. This also suggests that there is coordinated effect between local

Journal Pre-proof government environmental law enforcement and public participation. The above conclusions support Hypothesis 3. Thus, the active participation of the public in environmental governance can provide pressure and motivation for local officials by conveying their environmental demands to the superior government. The information about polluters‘ illegal actions can solve the problem of information asymmetry between governments and enterprises, which would make government environmental governance more effective. 6.3 Public Participation: Citizens or ENGOs?

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The previous findings verify that public participation is an important factor affecting local governments‘ environmental governance behaviour and REQ. However, according to the reality of environmental public participation in China, there are mainly two forms of citizen and ENGO participation. In the research hypothesis, we elaborated that although both are important ways of environmental public participation, there may be some differences in their results. That is, compared with citizen participation, ENGO participation has a broader horizontal network system and stronger social influence and energy, so the effect may be greater. We thus used the Panel Econometric Model to test the difference of impact on REQ between citizen participation and ENGO participation, and the results are reported in Table 5. Table 5 Differences between Citizen and ENGO participation

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Panel A: Public Participation = Citizen participation Investment 0.350

(11.25)

0.146

Legislation ***

(4.18)

Enforcement

-0.002 (-1.29)

Investment× Public Legislation×

-0.036

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Public

0.018***

0.081***

(3.41)

(10.87)

na

Legislation

lP

Investment

***

(-1.42) 0.010

Enforcement

0.014***

0.174***

(3.21)

(12.16)

-0.003

-0.054

-0.003

-0.029

(-1.59)

(-1.59)

(-1.62)

(-1.24)

*

(1.73)

0.010* (1.69)

Public Enforcement

0.018

× Public

(1.59)

Controls

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

Obs.

450

450

450

450

450

450

Year

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

Province

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

R-sq within

0.5162

0.6099

0.3794

0.6180

0.3773

0.5355

Panel B: Public Participation = ENGO Participation Investment

Legislation

Enforcement

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0.191***

0.090**

(4.14)

（2.01）

Legislation

0.025***

0.073***

(2.71)

（6.37）

Enforcement

Public

0.007

**

(1.97)

0.066

0.009

（7.08） 0.015

Investment×

***

**

(2.45)

0.075

***

（6.77）

0.006*

0.096***

(1.69)

（6.58）

0.011

***

(3.06)

0.041*** （7.08）

***

（6.76）

Public （6.25）

Public

ro

Enforcement

of

0.012***

Legislation×

yes

yes

yes

Obs.

270

270

270

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

R-sq within

0.3937

0.4980

0.3677

lP

Year Province

（6.37）

yes

yes

yes

270

270

270

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

0.4631

0.3543

0.4542

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Controls

-p

× Public

0.019***

Note: ***, ** and * denote a significance level of 1%, 5% and 10%, respectively; t statistics are reported in parentheses; Due to space

na

limitation, the estimated results of control variables are not reported here.

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From the results shown in Panel A of Table 5, the impact of citizen participation on REQ is not significant, indicating that citizen participation, as an aspect of public participation, cannot significantly promote the improvement of REQ. Furthermore, the interaction coefficients between citizen participation and environmental investment and between citizen participation and environmental legislation are only significant at the 10% level, while the interaction coefficient between citizen participation and local government‘s environmental law enforcement is insignificant, which indicates that the coordinated effect between citizen participation and local government environmental governance is weak. However, the results in Panel B of Table 5 show that ENGO participation has a significant positive impact on REQ. The interaction coefficient between ENGO participation and environmental investment, between ENGO participation and environmental legislation and between ENGO‘s participation and environmental law enforcement are significantly positive at 1%, which shows that there is a significant coordinated effect between ENGO participation and local government environmental governance. The above research results thus verify that ENGO participation has a better effect on the improvement of REQ than citizen participation, which is consistent with Hypothesis 4. 6.4 Further Study of Spatial Heterogeneity Figure 2 and Figure 3 reveal that REQ in China shows obvious spatial heterogeneity among

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the Eastern, Middle and Western regions. Moreover, due to the complex influence of various historical, geographical, economic and other factors, China‘s regional economic development appears to follow the spatial gradient pattern. That is, the Eastern region has priority for economic development, and its economic development level is relatively high; while the economic development of the Middle and Western regions is relatively backward. In the process of investigating the effect of government environmental governance and public participation on REQ, it is necessary to analyse this spatial heterogeneity in depth, which not only helps to identify the spatial heterogeneity of environmental governance‘s impact on REQ, but also helps to further control the endogenous estimation errors caused by missing variables, thus improving the accuracy of the research results. This study thus continues to use the Panel Econometric Model to estimate the samples for the Eastern, Middle and Western regions respectively, and the results are reported in Table 6. From the results shown in Table 6, it can be seen that, for the Eastern region, the impacts of government‘s environmental investment, environmental legislation and environmental law enforcement on REQ are significantly positive, which shows that government environmental governance in the Eastern region helps to improve the REQ. Public participation in the Eastern area also has a significant positive impact on REQ, which means that public participation in environmental governance in the Eastern area has achieved good results. Moreover, the interaction coefficients between local governments‘ environmental governance behaviour and public participation in the Eastern area are significantly positive, which also shows that there is a coordinated effect between government environmental governance and public participation in the Eastern region. Table 6 Results of Spatial Heterogeneity

Investment Legislation

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Enforcement

0.301***(4.79)

na

Panel A: Eastern

Public

Investment× Public

1.141***(4.83)

0.017**(2.34) 0.065***(7.32) 0.456***(4.95)

0.320***(4.68)

0.243***(5.08) 0.101***(6.17)

Legislation× Public

0.296***(6.87)

Enforcement× Public Controls

yes

yes

yes

Obs.

165

165

165

Year/Province

yes

yes

yes

R-sq within

0.7509

0.6615

0.6992

Panel B: Middle Investment

-0.028(-0.96) 0.005***(4.51)

Legislation Enforcement Public

0.002(1.19) -0.089(-0.85)

-0.038(-1.22)

-0.015(-1.62)

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0.023(0.89)

0.008(0.25)

Legislation× Public

0.013(1.54)

Enforcement× Public Controls

yes

yes

yes

Obs.

120

120

120

Year/Province

yes

yes

yes

R-sq within

0.9189

0.9385

0.9194

Panel C: Western 0.417***(6.38)

of

Investment Legislation

0.014(1.31)

Enforcement

Investment× Public

0.095(1.62)

R-sq within

re

0.200(1.19)

yes

yes

yes

165

165

165

yes

yes

yes

0.7688

0.6960

0.6878

na

Year/Province

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Enforcement× Public

Obs.

-0.271(-1.42)

0.082(1.01)

Legislation× Public

Controls

-0.362 (-1.47)

ro

-0.298(-1.50)

-p

Public

-0.035(-1.38)

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Note: ***, ** and * denote a significance level of 1%, 5% and 10%, respectively; t statistics are reported in parentheses; Due to space limitation, the estimated results of control variables are not reported here.

As for the Middle region, environmental legislation can promote the improvement of REQ significantly, while the effects of environmental investment and law enforcement on REQ are not significant for this region. More importantly, the impact of public participation in the Middle region is not significant, and its interaction coefficient with local governments‘ environmental governance behaviour (environmental investment, environmental legislation and environmental law enforcement) is still not significant, which shows that public participation in the Middle region has no significant impact on the improvement of REQ, nor can it form a coordinated effect with government environmental governance. Similarly, among the three types of local governments‘ environmental governance behaviours in the Western region, environmental investment can produce a significant positive impact on REQ, while environmental legislation and environmental law enforcement do not have a significant role in promoting REQ. The effect of public participation and the coordinated effect between public participation and government environmental governance in the Western are not significant. To sum up, the Eastern region of China has a higher level of economic development and a stronger sense of environmental protection among its citizens, and government environmental

Journal Pre-proof governance and public participation can significantly affect REQ and form a coordinated effect. In the Middle and Western regions of China, meanwhile, the economic development is backward and public environmental awareness is weak, so local governments‘ environmental governance behaviour cannot completely and significantly improve REQ, the impact of public participation on REQ is not significant and the coordinated effect between government environmental governance and public participation does not exist. 7.Conclusions and Implications

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In the process of accelerating the transformation of economic development in China, how to improve REQ has become an important social concern. Based on the sample data of 30 provinces in China from 2001 to 2015, the relationship between government environmental governance, public participation and REQ was here empirically analysed using a Panel Econometric Model. Empirical research results showed that: first, the scores for environmental pollution showed a downward trend and REQ deteriorated during the study period. The environmental deterioration situation in the Eastern, Middle and Western regions showed a relatively consistent trend, but the REQ in the Eastern region was the highest and the REQ level of Middle region was the lowest. Second, the impacts of local government‘s environmental investment, environmental legislation and environmental law enforcement on the improvement of REQ are significantly positive. Third, public participation affected environmental pollution scores in a significantly positive way as well, indicating that public participation can help improve REQ. Fourth, the interaction coefficients between local government‘s environmental governance behaviour (environmental investment, environmental legislation and environmental law enforcement) and public participation are significantly positive, which means that there is a coordinated effect between government environmental governance and public participation. Fifth, the impact of citizen participation on REQ was not significant, and the coordinated effect between citizen participation and government environmental governance was weak. ENGO participation had a significant positive impact on REQ, and it had a significant coordinated effect with government environmental governance in the improvement of REQ. Sixth, the impacts of government environmental governance and public participation on REQ had significant spatial heterogeneity. The above conclusions show that both government environmental governance and public participation play an important role in the improvement of REQ. It also confirms that public governance is inadequate at this stage in China, especially in the Middle and Western regions. This study thus holds that the strengthening of the coordinated effect of public participation and government environmental governance should be begin with the following aspects. (1) Developing public awareness of environmental governance. Environmental coordination governance requires multiple subjects to be in an equal position. At present, the popular view is that environmental governance is the government‘s business, and the lack of ownership consciousness should be the first issue that the public should consider. Only by taking environmental governance as its own responsibility, cultivating awareness of environmental governance and actively participating in pre-event, in-event and post-event links of environmental governance can the public‘s voice have greater opportunities to be reflected in the results of environmental governance. The government should thus increase financial and policy support for environmental protection publicity activities, actively carry out various environmental protection public welfare activities and establish an environmental education base.

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(2) Improving the quality and ability of public participation in environmental governance. Isolated individuals cannot effectively participate in environmental governance, and the process of environmental governance has put forward certain requirements for public awareness and skills. In some environmental mass incidents, public misunderstanding of environmental issues and inadequate ability to participate have led to serious consequences. The government should therefore enhance the public‘s expertise about environmental governance and encourage them to participate in environmental governance in a correct and legal way. (3) Support the development of ENGO. It is difficult for individuals to participate in environmental governance effectively. ENGO can organise public participation in environmental governance, and professionals in such organisations can also convey effective expertise to the public and improve the public‘s environmental governance awareness and skills. As intermediary organisations, ENGO can also, to a certain extent, gather public opinions and alleviate public complaints in environmental governance. The government should thus protect the establishment and operation of ENGO via legislation and provision of the necessary financial and policy support. (4) Improving the channels of public participation. In many environmental mass incidents, the lack of participation channels and the government‘s ignorance or even suppression of public appeals have led to poor results, including long-term and irreversible damage to the credibility of the government. The government should actively respond to the public‘s environmental demands; establish effective communication channels; handle petition letters, visits and telephone calls from the public in an efficient manner; and respect the public‘s principal position. Whether through the development of an environmental information disclosure system, environmental hearing system or environmental emergency system, there is still much room for improvement. In short, the government should actively cultivate public environmental awareness, broaden and improve the channels for public participation in environmental governance and induce the public to express their interests and demands correctly. Similarly, for countries with other political systems that may also have a principal-agent problem, public participation in environmental governance in these countries is also an important way for the public to safeguard their own interest, improve the quality of the environment and overall social welfare. In terms of other emerging economies, in order to seek economic development or private interests, ―government failure‖ in environmental governance may also occur, and public participation can effectively alleviate this problem of local government. Therefore, the conclusion of this paper is empirical, which can be applied in other countries. For future research, polluter and market mechanisms should be further introduced to demonstrate the interaction logic between the various subjects in the environmental governance system fully. Further attention should also be paid to the government, as the leader in the environmental governance system whose fiscal pressure, economic growth target and other individual factors could influence its environmental governance behaviour. The proposals mentioned above are put forth in the hope that they will generate more public discussion. Acknowledgement This work is supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 17AGL0005), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 2242018S10017).

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Journal Pre-proof Credit Author Statement Wu Lihua did the conceptualization, data curation, project administration and funding acquisition for study; Ma Tianshu did formal analysis, investigation; Bian Yuanchao did the methodology, resources, software, supervision and validation; Li Sijia did writing-original draft; and Li Sijia did writing-review & editing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Graphical Abstract

Highlights

1. The environmental investment, environmental legislation and environmental law enforcement were integrated into a unified framework of government governance for analysis. 2. We investigated the public participation from the dual perspectives of citizen participation and environmental non-government organization participation. 3. The coordinated effect of government environmental governance and public participation in the improvement of regional environmental quality was analysed. 4. Compared with citizen participation, the environmental non-government organizations‘ participation has a more significant positive effect.