Ranking effect in air pollution governance: Evidence from Chinese cities

Information disclosure in environmental governance, or informational governance conceptualized by Arthur Mol, has been increasingly utilized as a policy instrument to incentivize environmental policy enforcement in not only democratic societies but also authoritarian regimes like China. This study uses an explicit regulation, the air pollution ranking in Chinese cities as an example to illustrate how such informational governance policy instrument has an impact on local air pollution governance. Empirical evidence is based on monthly comprehensive air quality index ranking data of 74 key monitoring cities in China from 2013 to 2018. And a regression discontinuity design is applied to explore the relationship between air pollution ranking and air quality improvement in localities. The results show that (1) air quality of the bottom ten cities in the ranking will improve in the coming month compared with their counterparts; (2) such improvement happens upon the releasing of the ranking, but would not last for more than a month; (3) while top ten cities in the ranking do not experience such change in air quality. Therefore, we argue that the air pollution ranking system in China can be a useful informational governance instrument in providing negative incentives for environmental administrations in bottom cities to strengthen air pollution control. However, as a top-down environmental information disclosure program, such ranking institution could only mobilize local air quality governance temporarily. And new institutions ought to be established to further internalized local governments’ environmental externalities.