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Mechanisms of high-speed railways’ reducing industrial pollution: regulations and officials’ political promotion incentives

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Abstract

Severe industrial pollution is puzzling human health in the world. How to reduce industrial pollution is worth to be concerned about. Some studies have verified that high-speed railways (HSRs) can directly reduce environmental pollution via green technology. However, the indirectly environmental reducing effect of the HSRs from the regulation effect perspective is rarely explored. To address this research gap, this study used information asymmetry theory and the promotion tournament theory to examine the relationship between high-speed railways (HSRs) and industrial pollution by focusing on the mediating role of environmental regulations and the moderating role of officials' political promotion incentives. Based on a sample of 113 prefecture-level cities, with balanced panel data in China from 2009 to 2017, using the difference-in-differences model, the results show that HSRs can reduce industrial pollution by 22.68% on average. The mechanism is HSRs that can improve the environmental regulation, which plays the mediating effect to further reduce industrial pollution. Additionally, high officials' political promotion incentives can strengthen this mediating effect. A propensity score matching with the difference-in-differences model and the instrumental variable method is used to solve endogenous problems, and a placebo test and a parallel trend test indicate that these results are robust. This study suggests some policy implications on developing environment-friendly transportation and improving environmental regulations to reduce industrial pollution.

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Notes

  1. Information resource: http://www.zgqxb.com.cn/zx/gj/201903/t20190314_517274.html.

  2. Information resource: https://wiki.antpedia.com/article-2208260-210.

  3. Information resource: http://www.chinanews.com/.

  4. The eight indicators include disclosures of: enterprise violations, results of EPB enforcement campaigns, clean production audit information, enterprise environmental performance ratings, disposition of petitions and complaints, environmental impact assessment reports and project completion approvals, discharge fee data, and responses to public information requests.

  5. On May 1, 2008, Open Environmental Information measures came into effect. The Ministry of Environmental Protection requires governments to disclose information on environmental laws, regulations, and standards.

  6. Information source: http://www.zhaozhou.gov.cn/zhengminhudong/12380jubaowangzhan/faguizhidu/61733.html.

  7. Type II error in statistics means the null hypothesis is wrong, but the judgment shows it to be true.

Abbreviations

HSRs:

High-speed railways

DID:

Difference-in-differences

PSM-DID:

Propensity score matching with the difference-in-differences

IPE:

Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs

NRDC:

Natural Resources Defense Council

PITI:

Pollution information transparency index

GDP:

Gross domestic product

FDI:

Foreign direct investment

VIF:

Variance inflation factor

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Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 72002144).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Business School of Chengdu University, Chengdu, 610106, Sichuan, China

    Liping Li

  2. Business School of Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610064, Sichuan, China

    Qisheng Chen, Yuandi Wang & Ximeng Jia

  3. School of Statistics, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, 611130, Sichuan, China

    Jiang Wu

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  1. Liping Li
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  2. Qisheng Chen
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  4. Jiang Wu
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  5. Ximeng Jia
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Contributions

LL designed and drafted the manuscript. YW and QC supported the data collection. JW advised on manuscript submission. XJ revised the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ximeng Jia.

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Li, L., Chen, Q., Wang, Y. et al. Mechanisms of high-speed railways’ reducing industrial pollution: regulations and officials’ political promotion incentives. Clean Techn Environ Policy 24, 1469–1485 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-021-02259-w

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