Abstract
The innovative environmental system known as the river chief system (RCS) was developed in China to limit water pollution by appointing provincial, prefectural, county, and township officials as “river chiefs” as guardians of every river under their control. Our research project developed a quasi-natural experiment to investigate if the RCS effectively reduces the intensity of industrial water pollution. A multi-period difference-in-difference (DID) method was employed in the experiment with a total of 3808 samples from 272 prefecture-level cities. The samples gathered represented the years from 2007 to 2020. Our results demonstrated that the southern region has far more industrial water contamination than other locations, and the intensity of industrial sewage discharge decreased by 10.25% in pilot cities following the implementation of the RCS compared with what we observed in non-pilot cities. Furthermore, according to the mechanism analysis we used, cities that increased investment in technical advancement and modernized industrial structures may also account for this decreasing trend. Additionally, the results of geographical heterogeneity demonstrate that the RCS’s influence on curbing industrial water pollution is greater in cities with a higher intensity of environmental regulation and higher fiscal balance pressure than in locations with low environmental regulation and low fiscal balance pressure. In summary, the Chinese government needs to continue to strengthen the RCS’s implementation; this can be done by adjusting to local circumstances as needed and by carrying out the policy accurately and effectively across the country. Our research sheds light on how to prevent water pollution in China and in other countries and supports the positive effects and effectiveness of RCS.
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Funding
This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 42001221); the third Xinjiang Scientific Expedition and Research Program (no. 2022xjkk0305); the major projects of the humanities and Social Sciences base of the Ministry of Education (no. 22JJD790052); the Shaanxi Social Science Fund (no. 2022D049); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University (no. 2022ZYYB25), and the Shaanxi Provincial Public Welfare Geological Survey Project (no. 202202).
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Lan Mu: conceptualization, methodology, and funding acquisition.
Yuan Wang: data curation, writing-original raft reparation, and formal analysis.
Hui Mao: visualization, investigation, and software.
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Mu, L., Tan, Z., Luo, C. et al. Exploring the contribution of the river chief system on controlling industrial water pollution under quasi-natural experimental conditions. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 89415–89429 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28476-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28476-y