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Revealing the effectiveness of environmental policy stringency and environmental law on environmental performance: does asymmetry matter?

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Abstract

Environmental stringency policy shocks and environmental tax have become fundamental policy tools for mitigating the degradation of the environment. The study explores the effects of environmental tax and environmental stringency policy shocks in the reduction of pollution emissions in China for the time 1993 to 2019. This study is a pioneer in assessing the simultaneous impact of these two policy instruments on pollution emissions in China. For empirical investigation, the study employed NARDL estimation techniques. The NARDL results show that positive shocks in environmental tax reduce N2O emissions by 0.03%, PM2.5 emissions by 0.13%, CO2 emissions by 0.18%, and GHGs emissions by 0.01%, however, negative shocks in environmental tax increase N2O emissions by 0.01%, PM2.5 emissions by 0.07%, CO2 emissions by 0.28%, GHGs emissions by 0.17% in the long run. The long-run results also show that positive shocks in environmental policy stringency reduced CO2 emissions by 0.94%, GHGs emissions by 0.77%, while negative shocks in environmental policy stringency increased N2O emissions by 0.17%, PM2.5 emissions by 0.50%, CO2 emissions by 0.63%. The findings suggest vigorous policy implications.

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The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

2015 middle-aged and young teachers education research project of Fujian Provincial Department of Education: (Training students’ ability to identify the facts of cases in clinical legal education, (NO: JAS150852).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chengyi College, Jimei University, XiaMen, 361021, FuJian, China

    Mingxiang Chen

  2. Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), Islamabad, Pakistan

    Sidra Sohail

  3. School of Economics, Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Muhammad Tariq Majeed

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  1. Mingxiang Chen
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  2. Sidra Sohail
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This idea was given by Mingxiang Chen. Mingxiang Chen and Sidra Sohail analyzed the data and wrote the complete paper. While Muhammad Tariq Majeed read and approved the final version.

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Correspondence to Mingxiang Chen or Sidra Sohail.

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Chen, M., Sohail, S. & Majeed, M.T. Revealing the effectiveness of environmental policy stringency and environmental law on environmental performance: does asymmetry matter?. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 91190–91200 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21992-3

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