关键词: 环境信息披露, 污染减排, 双重差分法, 政策评估

Abstract: This paper uses China’s formal implementation of the environmental information disclosure system in 2008 as an exogenous shock to construct a quasi-natural experiment. Based on the panel data from 285 cities in China from 2004 to 2017, the impact of environmental information disclosure on industrial pollutant emissions is assessed with DID method. Overcoming the difficulties in measuring environmental information disclosure and the endogenous problem, this paper investigates the pollution reduction effect of environmental information disclosure and illustrates its mechanism by means of mathematical model for the first time. The results show that environmental information disclosure can significantly reduce the industrial pollutant emissions, and this impact has a certain time lag and long-term nature. At the same time, the effect of reduction shows an increasing quality with the enhancement of environmental pollution and environmental regulation in the region. In addition, the results of the mechanism analysis show that the transmission mechanism mainly comes from the transformation of industrial structure and the progress of emission reduction technology. In order to verify the robustness of the conclusions, this paper provides the test results of parallel trends, tool variables, placebos and other methods. This paper enriches the relevant discussions of the relationship between environmental information disclosure and environmental pollution control, and provides a useful policy enlightenment to improve the environmental pollution control in China and win the battle in pollution control and prevention. The mechanism by which environmental information disclosure affects pollution reduction is multifaceted. However, this paper only conducts empirical investigations based on city macro data from two aspects: the transformation of industrial structure and the progress of emission reduction technology. Future relevant research can be carried out based on enterprise micro data from other aspects to have a full understanding of the mechanism.

Key words: Environmental Information Disclosure, Pollution Reduction, Difference-In-Differences Method (DID), Policy Evaluation