Abstract
Enhancing energy efficiency is an important issue for countries facing pressures from energy shortages and environment pollution. Given increasing interest in the role of environmental supervision and the current lack of empirical evidence on this topic, this study investigates the impact of environmental supervision on firms’ energy efficiency by taking the Environmental Protection Admonishing Talk (EPAT) policy in China as a quasi-natural experiment. Using the difference-in-differences method and the panel data of more than 3 million firms in China from 2008 to 2016, we find that environmental supervision improves firms’ energy efficiency. This finding is validated by robustness tests and the difference-in-differences method combined with propensity score matching. The EPAT policy has varying effects on firms based on their location and size. A mechanism analysis shows that the EPAT policy improves firms’ energy efficiency mainly by incentivizing them to adopt new technologies and transforming their modes of production. These findings can provide novel microscopic evidence on environmental supervision and energy efficiency and offer clues for the improvement of environmental enforcement in developing countries.
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Data availability
The data used in this study can be accessed via the National Tax Survey Database and the China City Statistical Yearbook (2008–2016).
Notes
The most well-known environmental supervision polices in China include the EPAT policy and central environmental protection inspection. The latter was first launched only in Hebei Province at the end of 2015 and became a nationwide policy in mid-2016 (see http://sthjt.jl.gov.cn/ztzl/sthjbhdczgjxs/dcyw/201911/t20191115_6141346.html).
China has been the largest energy consumer since 2009; it accounted for 26.1% of global energy consumption in 2020 (see https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html).
For the official document, see http://w2.jiaodong.net/ythjjc/system/2015/11/03/010198004.shtml.
For the official document, see https://www.mee.gov.cn/xxgk2018/xxgk/xxgk03/202008/t20200827_795475.html.
For the official document, see http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2014-04/25/content_2666328.htm.
For the official document, see http://www.gov.cn/zwgk/2013-09/12/content_2486773.htm.
For specific reasons, see http://w2.jiaodong.net/ythjjc/system/2015/11/03/010198004.shtml.
As the first EPAT in China occurred in September 2014, it is regarded to have occurred in 2015 in this study.
The data are manually collected and sorted from newspapers and online sources, such as the official website of the MEE and State Council of the People’s Republic of China.
For the area classification standard proposed by the National Bureau of Statistics, see http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjfw/tjzx/zxgk/202107/t20210730_1820095.html.
If an EPAT occurred before July 1 in year t, it is regarded as having occurred in year t; otherwise, it is assumed to have occurred in year t + 1.
The city-level treatment group comprises cities where at least one EPAT occurred, and the city-level control group comprises cities where no EPAT occurred.
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This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21AJL016).
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Ying Jiang contributed to the conceptualization, funding acquisition, formal analysis, and writing—reviewing and editing. Na Chen contributed to the formal analysis, methodology, writing—original draft, and writing—reviewing and editing. Dandan Zhu contributed to the data curation, formal analysis, methodology, software, and writing—reviewing and editing. Meibo Huang contributed to the supervision and validation.
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Jiang, Y., Chen, N., Zhu, D. et al. The impact of environmental supervision on firms’ energy efficiency: evidence from the Environmental Protection Admonishing Talk policy in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 37775–37790 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-24675-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-24675-1