When Two Hands Clap: Government and Public Spatial Collaborative Oversight and the Effectiveness of Environmental Regulation
Presented by:
Tingting Xie
School of Economics
Central University of Finance and Economics
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
12:00 pm-1:30 pm
Taylor-Hibbard Seminar Room (Rm103)
The effective enforcement of environmental regulation fundamentally depends on the ability to detect pollution incidents. This paper exploits the staggered establishment of automatic air-monitoring stations in China as a quasi-natural experiment and employs a difference-in-differences framework to identify the spatially heterogeneous effects of top-down and bottom-up regulatory mechanisms. The results show that in urban cores—where pollution sources are concentrated and environmental performance is more politically salient—formal government oversight plays a dominant role in improving air quality. In contrast, in suburban areas characterized by dispersed pollution sources and weaker politically salient, bottom-up citizen monitoring serves as a crucial complement. Mechanism analysis reveals that the establishment of monitoring stations activates suburban participation through an information–awareness–complaint–enforcement channel: public disclosure of pollution data enhances environmental awareness, triggers citizen complaints, and subsequently induces government enforcement. By systematically distinguishing the contexts in which formal and informal regulatory forces are most effective, this paper provides new insights into how government and citizen oversight can jointly enhance the effectiveness of environmental governance.