Competition for Safety: The National Civilized City Campaign and Enterprise Production Safety in China

Awards and competitions are representative policy instruments of the central government to promote urban governance. Compared with command-and-control tools, awards and competitions can encourage regulators and regulated parties to actively participate in governance. Using the panel data of 286 Chinese cities during 2005 to 2017 and regarding the National Civilized City (NCC) campaign as a quasi-natural experiment, we employ the difference-in-difference (DID) method to analyze the impact of the NCC campaign on enterprise production safety and its spillover effect. Our findings indicate that the NCC campaign significantly reduces enterprise production safety accidents and deaths in cities with the title of the NCC. However, this campaign appears to engender an unintended consequence: an increase in such incidents in the neighboring cities surrounding the NCCs. Heterogeneity analysis further shows that in non-old industrial base, low corruption and low economic growth target cities, the promotion effect of the NCC campaign on enterprise production safety is more significant. The increase in production safety input and the reinforcement of corporate social responsibility are the main influencing mechanisms. This paper can contribute to decision-makers thinking about how to improve enterprise production safety through awards and competitions under the governance structure with Chinese characteristics.