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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Can Market-Based Environmental Regulation
Inhibit the Industrial Water Pollution?
1
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology,
No 666 Changhui Road, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, China
Submission date: 2023-11-17
Final revision date: 2024-02-28
Acceptance date: 2024-03-25
Online publication date: 2024-06-26
Publication date: 2025-01-02
Corresponding author
Hao Zhang
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, No 666 Changhui Road, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, China
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, No 666 Changhui Road, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2025;34(1):657-669
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Environmental tax, as an essential part of China’s green tax reform, plays a key role in promoting
the construction of an ecological society. To empirically test the policy effect of environmental taxes,
this study used the panel data from 274 prefecture-level cities for the period 2012-2020 to explore
whether the implementation of environmental tax can reduce the intensity of industrial water pollution.
The main results are as follows: (1) The implementation of environmental tax can significantly reduce
the emission of industrial water pollution, and the policy effect has shown a persistent trend. (2) In terms
of heterogeneity, we find that the impact of environmental tax on reducing industrial water pollution is
higher in central-western regions. (3) Mechanism analysis shows that the policy effect of environmental
tax is mainly through channels such as enhancing law enforcement rigidity and improving local
green innovation. Our findings provide new evidence for understanding the green dividend effect
of environmental tax and provide significant policy implications for China’s ecological society.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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