IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v114y2024i3p815-50.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does the Squeaky Wheel Get More Grease? The Direct and Indirect Effects of Citizen Participation on Environmental Governance in China

Author

Listed:
  • Mark T. Buntaine
  • Michael Greenstone
  • Guojun He
  • Mengdi Liu
  • Shaoda Wang
  • Bing Zhang

Abstract

We conducted a nationwide field experiment in China to evaluate the direct and indirect impacts of assigning firms to public or private citizen appeals when they violate pollution standards. There are three main findings. First, public appeals to the regulator through social media substantially reduce violations and pollution emissions, while private appeals cause more modest environmental improvements. Second, public appeals appear to tilt regulators' focus away from facilitating economic growth and toward avoiding pollution-induced public unrest. Third, pollution reductions by treated firms are not offset by control firms, based on randomly varying the proportion of treated firms at the prefecture level.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark T. Buntaine & Michael Greenstone & Guojun He & Mengdi Liu & Shaoda Wang & Bing Zhang, 2024. "Does the Squeaky Wheel Get More Grease? The Direct and Indirect Effects of Citizen Participation on Environmental Governance in China," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(3), pages 815-850, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:114:y:2024:i:3:p:815-50
    DOI: 10.1257/aer.20221215
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20221215
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E194521V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20221215.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20221215.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/aer.20221215?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chen, Fanglin & Zhang, Tianzi & Chen, Zhongfei, 2024. "Assessment of environmental concern for enterprise pollution reduction," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 772-786.
    2. Fanlin Kong & Shaojun Chen & Jie Gou, 2023. "How Does Differential Public Participation Influence Outcome Justice in Energy Transitions? Evidence from a Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Project in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(24), pages 1-15, December.
    3. Liu, Yazhou & Cheng, Yunqian & Li, Tianshu & Ni, Jinlan & Norman, Stephen, 2024. "Information disclosure and public participation in environmental management: Evidence from the river chief system in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    4. Araujo, Rafael & Costa, Francisco J M & Garg, Teevrat, 2022. "Public Attention and Environmental Action: Evidence from Fires in the Amazon," SocArXiv xj3f6, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • P28 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Natural Resources; Environment
    • P31 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Socialist Enterprises and Their Transitions
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:114:y:2024:i:3:p:815-50. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.