Impact of rating and praise campaigns on local government environmental governance efficiency: Evidence from the campaign of establishment of national sanitary cities in China.
<h4>Background</h4>Ecological and environmental protection is essential to achieving sustainable and high-quality development, which highlights the important role of environmental governance. In terms of the practical actions of environmental governance, the central government in China h...
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doaj-aa5bbe77200f4d999f3f28cf8d91fb142021-07-22T04:30:38ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032021-01-01166e025370310.1371/journal.pone.0253703Impact of rating and praise campaigns on local government environmental governance efficiency: Evidence from the campaign of establishment of national sanitary cities in China.Genli TangMinghai LinYilan XuJinlin LiLitai Chen<h4>Background</h4>Ecological and environmental protection is essential to achieving sustainable and high-quality development, which highlights the important role of environmental governance. In terms of the practical actions of environmental governance, the central government in China has carried out continuous rating and praise campaigns, and local governments have actively promoted this effort. However, the related performance consequences have not been empirically investigated. We aimed to verify whether this incentive policy can improve the efficiency of environmental governance and whether this governance method has long-term effects. In addition, we sought to identify mechanisms through which the policy can improve environmental governance.<h4>Method</h4>We take the rating and praise campaign of the Establishment of National Sanitary Cities (EONSCs) as a quasi-natural experiment and use the panel data for 174 cities from 2004 to 2016 and the propensity score matching-difference in differences (PSM-DID) method to test the impact of rating and praise campaigns on environmental governance efficiency.<h4>Results</h4>EONSCs campaign can improve the efficiency of environmental governance by 0.7595 (p<0.01), which is significant at the 1% level; the effects are clearly significant during the evaluation process and the year in which cities are named National Sanitary Cities (NSCs) but decrease annually thereafter. The EONSCs campaign has a significant promoting effect on public services provision, such as public infrastructure investment, public transportation and education.<h4>Conclusions</h4>(1) The rating and praise campaigns can effectively improve the efficiency of environmental governance; (2) the incentive effect is distorted and is not a long-term effect; (3) the impact of the rating and praise campaign of EONSCs on the efficiency of environmental governance is mainly realized through the provision of corresponding public services that are closely related to environmental protection. The findings of this paper provide empirical support for the effectiveness of the central government's rating and praise campaigns and could motivate local governments to actively participate in environmental governance. Moreover, the findings provide an important reference for further improving the rating and praise campaigns and the level of environmental governance.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253703 |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Genli Tang Minghai Lin Yilan Xu Jinlin Li Litai Chen |
spellingShingle |
Genli Tang Minghai Lin Yilan Xu Jinlin Li Litai Chen Impact of rating and praise campaigns on local government environmental governance efficiency: Evidence from the campaign of establishment of national sanitary cities in China. PLoS ONE |
author_facet |
Genli Tang Minghai Lin Yilan Xu Jinlin Li Litai Chen |
author_sort |
Genli Tang |
title |
Impact of rating and praise campaigns on local government environmental governance efficiency: Evidence from the campaign of establishment of national sanitary cities in China. |
title_short |
Impact of rating and praise campaigns on local government environmental governance efficiency: Evidence from the campaign of establishment of national sanitary cities in China. |
title_full |
Impact of rating and praise campaigns on local government environmental governance efficiency: Evidence from the campaign of establishment of national sanitary cities in China. |
title_fullStr |
Impact of rating and praise campaigns on local government environmental governance efficiency: Evidence from the campaign of establishment of national sanitary cities in China. |
title_full_unstemmed |
Impact of rating and praise campaigns on local government environmental governance efficiency: Evidence from the campaign of establishment of national sanitary cities in China. |
title_sort |
impact of rating and praise campaigns on local government environmental governance efficiency: evidence from the campaign of establishment of national sanitary cities in china. |
publisher |
Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
series |
PLoS ONE |
issn |
1932-6203 |
publishDate |
2021-01-01 |
description |
<h4>Background</h4>Ecological and environmental protection is essential to achieving sustainable and high-quality development, which highlights the important role of environmental governance. In terms of the practical actions of environmental governance, the central government in China has carried out continuous rating and praise campaigns, and local governments have actively promoted this effort. However, the related performance consequences have not been empirically investigated. We aimed to verify whether this incentive policy can improve the efficiency of environmental governance and whether this governance method has long-term effects. In addition, we sought to identify mechanisms through which the policy can improve environmental governance.<h4>Method</h4>We take the rating and praise campaign of the Establishment of National Sanitary Cities (EONSCs) as a quasi-natural experiment and use the panel data for 174 cities from 2004 to 2016 and the propensity score matching-difference in differences (PSM-DID) method to test the impact of rating and praise campaigns on environmental governance efficiency.<h4>Results</h4>EONSCs campaign can improve the efficiency of environmental governance by 0.7595 (p<0.01), which is significant at the 1% level; the effects are clearly significant during the evaluation process and the year in which cities are named National Sanitary Cities (NSCs) but decrease annually thereafter. The EONSCs campaign has a significant promoting effect on public services provision, such as public infrastructure investment, public transportation and education.<h4>Conclusions</h4>(1) The rating and praise campaigns can effectively improve the efficiency of environmental governance; (2) the incentive effect is distorted and is not a long-term effect; (3) the impact of the rating and praise campaign of EONSCs on the efficiency of environmental governance is mainly realized through the provision of corresponding public services that are closely related to environmental protection. The findings of this paper provide empirical support for the effectiveness of the central government's rating and praise campaigns and could motivate local governments to actively participate in environmental governance. Moreover, the findings provide an important reference for further improving the rating and praise campaigns and the level of environmental governance. |
url |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253703 |
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