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. 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.

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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

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