How does the air pollution prevention and control action plan affect sulfur dioxide intensity in China?

Shuhai Niu; Yidong Chen; Ruiwen Zhang; Yanchao Feng

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2023.1119710

How does the air pollution prevention and control action plan affect sulfur dioxide intensity in China?

Front Public Health. 2023 Jan 26:11:1119710. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1119710. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Shuhai Niu¹, Yidong Chen¹, Ruiwen Zhang¹, Yanchao Feng¹

Affiliation

¹ Business School, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China.

Abstract

As a part of China's efforts to mitigate and control air pollution in key areas, the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan was implemented in 2013, and several regulatory measures were introduced. Based on the data from 271 prefecture-level cities between 2008 and 2018, the difference-in-differences model is used to explore the effect of it on sulfur dioxide intensity in our study, and several significant results are as follows: (1) The baseline results suggest a 23% reduction in sulfur dioxide intensity in pilot cities compared to non-pilot cities. (2) The total factor productivity fails to play a partial mediating role in reducing the sulfur dioxide intensity under the implementation of the policy. (3) The results of the triple differences model suggest that the policy still exerts significant adverse effects on sulfur dioxide intensity in the pilot areas of the carbon emission trading scheme.

Keywords: China; air pollution control policy; quasi-natural experiment; sulfur dioxide intensity; total factor productivity.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Air Pollutants* / analysis
Air Pollution* / analysis
Air Pollution* / prevention & control
China
Cities
Sulfur Dioxide / analysis

Substances

Sulfur Dioxide
Air Pollutants

Grants and funding

This research was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (Nos. 20BJY094 and 2020FYB010) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2022M720131).