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Do Authoritarian Governments Respond to Public Opinion on the Environment? Evidence from China

Given its serious impacts on the public’s health, air pollution in China is a matter of strong public concern, particularly in reference to malodorous waste gas. Petition letters related to atmospheric pollution accounted for about 40% of the total petition cases. However, scholarly views differ on...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Tang, Xiao, Chen, Weiwei, Wu, Tian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5858335/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29401701
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15020266
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author Tang, Xiao
Chen, Weiwei
Wu, Tian
author_facet Tang, Xiao
Chen, Weiwei
Wu, Tian
author_sort Tang, Xiao
collection PubMed
description Given its serious impacts on the public’s health, air pollution in China is a matter of strong public concern, particularly in reference to malodorous waste gas. Petition letters related to atmospheric pollution accounted for about 40% of the total petition cases. However, scholarly views differ on whether the Chinese government responds to public opinion on the environment and seeks to improve its environmental governance behavior. For this study, data from national surveys on the public’s environmental satisfaction administered during the period 2011–2015 were analyzed to determine whether the public’s dissatisfaction with the state of the environment in a given year resulted in increased investments by provincial governments in pollution governance during the following year. The study’s findings revealed that governmental behavior in response to public opinion on the environment was selective within the field of environmental governance, with provincial governments being inclined to invest more in waste gas pollution control than in water pollution control. Furthermore, results from this study show that the Chinese government tends to put more efforts into the environmental field where it could more easily achieve short-term benefits.
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spelling pubmed-58583352018-03-19 Do Authoritarian Governments Respond to Public Opinion on the Environment? Evidence from China Tang, Xiao Chen, Weiwei Wu, Tian Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Given its serious impacts on the public’s health, air pollution in China is a matter of strong public concern, particularly in reference to malodorous waste gas. Petition letters related to atmospheric pollution accounted for about 40% of the total petition cases. However, scholarly views differ on whether the Chinese government responds to public opinion on the environment and seeks to improve its environmental governance behavior. For this study, data from national surveys on the public’s environmental satisfaction administered during the period 2011–2015 were analyzed to determine whether the public’s dissatisfaction with the state of the environment in a given year resulted in increased investments by provincial governments in pollution governance during the following year. The study’s findings revealed that governmental behavior in response to public opinion on the environment was selective within the field of environmental governance, with provincial governments being inclined to invest more in waste gas pollution control than in water pollution control. Furthermore, results from this study show that the Chinese government tends to put more efforts into the environmental field where it could more easily achieve short-term benefits. MDPI 2018-02-04 2018-02 /pmc/articles/PMC5858335/ /pubmed/29401701 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15020266 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Tang, Xiao
Chen, Weiwei
Wu, Tian
Do Authoritarian Governments Respond to Public Opinion on the Environment? Evidence from China
title Do Authoritarian Governments Respond to Public Opinion on the Environment? Evidence from China
title_full Do Authoritarian Governments Respond to Public Opinion on the Environment? Evidence from China
title_fullStr Do Authoritarian Governments Respond to Public Opinion on the Environment? Evidence from China
title_full_unstemmed Do Authoritarian Governments Respond to Public Opinion on the Environment? Evidence from China
title_short Do Authoritarian Governments Respond to Public Opinion on the Environment? Evidence from China
title_sort do authoritarian governments respond to public opinion on the environment? evidence from china
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5858335/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29401701
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15020266
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