Does vertical administrative integration of environmental monitoring at the provincial level effectively motivate firms to improve environmental behaviour in China?
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852318780993 |
| Author | Yong Liu |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Does vertical
administrative
integration of
environmental
monitoring at the
provincial level effectively
motivate firms to
improve environmental
behaviour in China?
Yong Liu
Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
Abstract
A few cities and provinces in China have implemented vertical administrative integra-
tion of environmental monitoring to the provincial level as a response to severe envi-
ronmental pollution. This study used an adaptive agent-based simulation model to
explore whether the reform might effectively motivate polluting industrial firms to
improve their environmental behaviour. Simulation results found that the reform
might not effectively motivate the desired improvements in environmental behaviour
unless policy-makers improve individual enterprises’ financial capacities, enhance their
subsidies, and encourage managers to improve their environmental awareness.
These findings could be used in the vertical administrative reform efforts to help
achieve the reform’s success.
Points for practitioners
The vertical reform needs to be sufficiently systematic across its governmental struc-
ture because it cannot operate in isolation. It is a part of the country’s complex
Corresponding author:
Yong Liu, No. 24, South Section 1, Yihuan Road, Chengdu, China.
Email: yonghopeliu@sina.com
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2020, Vol. 86(3) 547–566
!The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0020852318780993
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
economic, social, and environmental societal system. Combining administrative restruc-
turing with regulation of micro-agents’ behaviour might increase the reform’s likelihood
of success, and financial policies might improve preventive/enthusiastic environmental
behaviour. A sophisticated policy approach, such as encouraging preventive/enthusiastic
environmental behaviour through business opportunities, might ease behaviou-
ral change.
Keywords
agent-based model, environment monitoring, policy performance, vertical administra-
tive reform
Introduction
A key challenge to the management of the natural environment is achieving inter-
nal managerial and organizational alignment across levels as a way to increase
performance. This is particularly the case in China, whose industrial pollution
challenges have been documented by many researchers (Liu, 2017). For many
years, China’s central government employed a ‘tournament competition’ approach
among municipal governments that focused on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as
the key criterion to assess municipal officials’ promotions (Jiao et al., 2011).
Therefore, municipal officials developed their local industrial economies and had
little incentive to protect the natural environment. Many established industries
acted abusively towards the environment (Song et al., 2015). Thus, industrial enter-
prises are the main causes of the pollution problems (Liu and Ye, 2012).
Municipal governments particularly preferred large industrial enterprises, such
as state-owned industries, because they made large contributions to municipal
GDPs (Ma et al., 2015). These large enterprises developed close relationships
with local governments, which improved their likelihood of obtaining governmen-
tal support, including relatively low environmental monitoring and evaluation
standards. In some cases, municipal governments even helped to hide environmen-
tal pollution caused by these large industrial enterprises (Ma et al., 2015).
Furthermore, although the environmental officials were authorized to regulate
these abusive environmental activities, they had little incentive to do so because
their promotion might be jeopardized (Chen, 2016). For example, municipal gov-
ernments determined their municipal environmental officials’ promotions.
In 2016, to strengthen municipal environmental officials’ powers to motivate
industries to improve their environmental behaviour, the Chinese central govern-
ment changed the management system by enacting the Environmental Vertical
Management Reform (EVMR), which mandated that provincial governments
determine the promotions of municipal and county (district) environmental offi-
cials. However, the extent to which the EVMR effectively motivates polluting
548 International Review of Administrative Sciences 86(3)
To continue reading
Request your trial