Does the National Forest City Policy Promote Haze Pollution Control?

Abstract

Air pollution is a significant issue with global impacts. The implementation of China’s national forest city policy may provide some valuable references for air pollution control. First of all, this chapter introduces the main content of China’s national forest city policy selection. Then, under the condition of considering the time lag effect, spatial lag effect, and space–time hysteresis, it uses the unique and comprehensive panel data of 276 cities in China from 2003 to 2016. In doing so, we use the difference in differences method (DID) and the dynamic SAR model to estimate the policy effects of the implementation of national forest cities on the control of haze pollution. We find that there is an apparent spatial spillover effect in China’s smog pollution. In addition, there is a strong positive correlation between the local smog pollution between the local areas and the surrounding areas in the same period. In this period, the higher the local smog pollution is, the higher the smog pollution in the next period of the local area is. In contrast, the next period of smog pollution in the surrounding is lower. The national forest city policy has improved the level of urban greening and can significantly reduce urban smog pollution. Whether in the long-term or short-term, if a city is selected as a forest city, it will substantially promote the smog pollution of the city and surrounding cities. However, the impact of the national forest city policy on smog pollution also shows cyclical fluctuations, like after each review by the central government, the effect of the national forest city policy to reduce haze pollution will be significantly improved.