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MMUNITY NEWS
Does Citizen Participation
Affect Environmental
Governance in China?
By the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI)
An increasingly popular tool for reducing in monitoring pollution. From May to December
pollution is to encourage bottom-up 2020, researchers began each day by identifying
participation in environmental governance. all CEMS firms that violated relevant emissions
China has created official channels for the public standards. When a treated firm committed a
to report pollution and violations of emissions violation, citizen volunteers recruited from three
standards set by regulators, though how effective partnering NGOs filed an appeal through one
such efforts have been remains unclear. This of two channels: (1) private appeals, where the
study explores the direct and indirect impacts citizens complained to the regulator or the firm
of public participation in the enforcement of about the violation in ways that could not be
environmental standards in China, the world’s observed by members of the public; and (2) public
largest polluter and manufacturer. appeals, where the citizens complained about
the violation on Weibo, a popular Chinese social
The data. Researchers conducted a nationwide media platform comparable to Twitter. For half
field experiment using the Ministry of Ecology of the public appeals, researchers hired a social
and Environment’s (MEE) Continuous Emissions media firm to increase the number of “likes”
Monitoring System (CEMS). The system and “shares” to gauge whether public appeals
automatically collects hourly emissions data from with higher visibility generated more significant
24,620 major polluting plants around the country, regulatory responses. In total, the experiment
which are responsible for 75% of China’s total intervened against nearly 3,000 pollution
industrial emissions. violations across a period of 8 months.
Each CEMS firm was randomly assigned to either Final analyses were conducted after researchers
a control group or one of several treatment merged the MEE data on all citizen appeals
groups that mirror the officially-sanctioned against the CEMS firms in 2020, which includes
ways that citizens and non-governmental appeals filed by citizens on their own volition and
organizations (NGOs) in China already participate the ones generated by the experiment, and the
Effect of citizen appeals on emission violations and emission concentrations
29 AMCHAM SOUTH CHINA
Does Citizen Participation
Affect Environmental
Governance in China?
By the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI)
An increasingly popular tool for reducing in monitoring pollution. From May to December
pollution is to encourage bottom-up 2020, researchers began each day by identifying
participation in environmental governance. all CEMS firms that violated relevant emissions
China has created official channels for the public standards. When a treated firm committed a
to report pollution and violations of emissions violation, citizen volunteers recruited from three
standards set by regulators, though how effective partnering NGOs filed an appeal through one
such efforts have been remains unclear. This of two channels: (1) private appeals, where the
study explores the direct and indirect impacts citizens complained to the regulator or the firm
of public participation in the enforcement of about the violation in ways that could not be
environmental standards in China, the world’s observed by members of the public; and (2) public
largest polluter and manufacturer. appeals, where the citizens complained about
the violation on Weibo, a popular Chinese social
The data. Researchers conducted a nationwide media platform comparable to Twitter. For half
field experiment using the Ministry of Ecology of the public appeals, researchers hired a social
and Environment’s (MEE) Continuous Emissions media firm to increase the number of “likes”
Monitoring System (CEMS). The system and “shares” to gauge whether public appeals
automatically collects hourly emissions data from with higher visibility generated more significant
24,620 major polluting plants around the country, regulatory responses. In total, the experiment
which are responsible for 75% of China’s total intervened against nearly 3,000 pollution
industrial emissions. violations across a period of 8 months.
Each CEMS firm was randomly assigned to either Final analyses were conducted after researchers
a control group or one of several treatment merged the MEE data on all citizen appeals
groups that mirror the officially-sanctioned against the CEMS firms in 2020, which includes
ways that citizens and non-governmental appeals filed by citizens on their own volition and
organizations (NGOs) in China already participate the ones generated by the experiment, and the
Effect of citizen appeals on emission violations and emission concentrations
29 AMCHAM SOUTH CHINA
