Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Jan 26:11:1119710.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1119710. eCollection 2023.

How does the air pollution prevention and control action plan affect sulfur dioxide intensity in China?

Shuhai Niu  1 , Yidong Chen  1 , Ruiwen Zhang  1 , Yanchao Feng  1
Affiliations

How does the air pollution prevention and control action plan affect sulfur dioxide intensity in China?

Shuhai Niu et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

As a part of China's efforts to mitigate and control air pollution in key areas, the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan was implemented in 2013, and several regulatory measures were introduced. Based on the data from 271 prefecture-level cities between 2008 and 2018, the difference-in-differences model is used to explore the effect of it on sulfur dioxide intensity in our study, and several significant results are as follows: (1) The baseline results suggest a 23% reduction in sulfur dioxide intensity in pilot cities compared to non-pilot cities. (2) The total factor productivity fails to play a partial mediating role in reducing the sulfur dioxide intensity under the implementation of the policy. (3) The results of the triple differences model suggest that the policy still exerts significant adverse effects on sulfur dioxide intensity in the pilot areas of the carbon emission trading scheme.

Keywords: China; air pollution control policy; quasi-natural experiment; sulfur dioxide intensity; total factor productivity.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Sulfur dioxide emission in (A) 2008 and (B) 2018.
Figure 2
Figure 2
National sulfur dioxide emission changes from 2000 to 2020.
Figure 3
Figure 3
National sulfur dioxide intensity changes from 2000 to 2020.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Placebo test. (A) 500 times. (B) 1,000 times.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Parallel trend test of sulfur dioxide intensity in the experimental and control groups.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Arceo E, Hanna R, Oliva P. Does the effect of pollution on infant mortality differ between developing and developed countries? Evidence from Mexico City. Econ J. (2016) 126:257–80. 10.1111/ecoj.12273 - DOI
    1. Kim Y, Kim JY, Lee S. -B., Moon K. -C., Bae G. -N. (2015). Review on the recent PM2.5 studies in China. J Korean Soc Atmos Environ. (2015) 31:5441–29. 10.5572/KOSAE.2015.31.5.411 - DOI
    1. Zhang XY, Jiang H, Jin JX, Xu XH, Zhang QX. Analysis of acid rain patterns in northeastern China using a decision tree method. Atmos Environ. (2012) 46:590–6. 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2011.03.004 - DOI
    1. Song Y, Zhang M, Sun RF. Using a new aggregated indicator to evaluate China's energy security. Energy Policy. (2019) 132:167–74. 10.1016/j.enpol.2019.05.036 - DOI
    1. Si YD, Yu C, Zhang L, Zhu WD, Cai K, Cheng LX, et al. . Assessment of satellite-estimated near-surface sulfate and nitrate concentrations and their precursor emissions over China from 2006 to 2014. Sci Total Environ. (2019) 669:362–76. 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.02.180 - DOI - PubMed

Publication types