Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
工业企业如何应对短期环境法规？——来自中国空气质量预警的证据
How Do Industrial Plants Respond to Short-Term Environmental Regulations? Evidence from China’s Air Quality Alerts
摘要
Governments around the world use short-term environmental regulations to mitigate acute air pollution episodes, including air quality alerts (AQAs) that trigger temporary regulatory and behavioral responses. Yet little is known about how industrial plants respond when such interventions impose episodic command-and-control requirements. Exploiting the timing of alert activations and terminations in China’s heavily polluted Guanzhong region between 2013 and 2020 as quasi-experimental variation, we examine plant-level compliance dynamics. Applying a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) design to hourly data from 244 industrial plants equipped with continuous emission monitoring systems (CEMS), we find that higher-level alert activations significantly reduce SO2 and NOx emissions, whereas less stringent alerts generate limited response. These reductions occur primarily through intensified operation of end-of-pipe pollution control facilities rather than reductions in production intensity. Environmental inspections also increase during alert periods and are associated with stronger emission reductions. We further document evidence consistent with “alert fatigue”: plants become less responsive when alerts are adjusted repeatedly over short periods. Our findings show that the effectiveness of episodic environmental regulation depends not only on regulatory stringency and enforcement intensity, but also on the temporal structure of regulatory interventions and plants’ ability to repeatedly adjust operations within short compliance windows.
中文摘要
世界各国政府采用短期环境规制以缓解急性空气污染事件，其中包括触发临时性监管与行为响应的空气质量警报（AQAs）。然而，当此类干预措施施加间歇性命令控制型要求时，工业企业如何应对，目前尚知之甚少。本文利用2013年至2020年间中国重污染地区关中地区警报启动与终止的时间作为准实验变异，考察企业层面的合规动态。我们将时间断点回归（RDiT）设计应用于244家配备连续排放监测系统（CEMS）的工业企业的逐小时数据，发现更高级别警报的启动显著降低了SO2和NOx排放，而较不严格的警报所产生的响应有限。这些减排主要通过强化末端污染治理设施的运行实现，而非通过降低生产强度。警报期间环境检查也有所增加，并与更强的减排相关联。我们进一步记录了与“警报疲劳”相一致的证据：当警报在短期内被反复调整时，企业的响应性下降。我们的研究结果表明，间歇性环境规制的有效性不仅取决于监管严格程度和执法强度，还取决于监管干预的时间结构以及企业在短暂合规窗口内反复调整运营的能力。