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Haze pollution caused by particulate matter such as PM2.5 and PM10 significantly affects public health. Confronted with haze pollution, people have increasingly taken to expressing opinions online to demand restrictions on pollution discharge by enterprises to protect their health rights. However, are such public demands met by the government and incorporated into policy agenda relating to environmental regulation policies? To investigate this question, this study employed text content analysis to examine the role of public opinion as an intermediary in the relationship between haze pollution and the formulation of environmental regulation policies, using a dataset of 460 environmental regulation policy documents and over 800,000 public opinions on environmental issues spanning from January 2011 to December 2021. We found that public opinion exerted a significant intermediary effect by linking haze pollution and environmental regulation policy tools. Further analysis revealed heterogeneity in the influence of public opinion on environmental regulation policy tools. Public opinion exhibited the most substantial intermediary effect on command-control policy tools (with a 6.68% intermediary effect), followed by economic incentive policy tools (4.65%) and social autonomy policy tools (4.58%). Additionally, there was a notable time lag in the impact of public opinion on environmental regulation policy tools. It took approximately 7–10 months for the government to respond to the disseminated public opinions. This study may shed light on how the government can encourage public engagement, respond to, and guide public opinion. [Display omitted] • Public opinion plays an intermediary role between haze and regulatory policy. • 7–10 months' time lag of environmental policy to public opinion was estimated. • The heterogeneity in the impact of public opinion on three policy tools was analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, it is found that environmental regulation is an important mechanism that trade openness affects the level of human capital. The author established a theoretical framework to analyze the influence of trade openness on the level of human capital and adopted the system GMM to test it, using Chinese provincial data over the period 1995–2015. The empirical results show that environmental regulation has a long-term U-shaped effect on the level of human capital, while the current environmental regulation in China is conducive to improving the level of human capital. Furthermore, the promotion of human capital level can also increase the possibility of improving environmental regulation, which is conducive to the internal formation and positive interaction between human capital and environmental regulation. The research further enriches the theory of sustainable development of environment and economy. It provides theoretical support for China and developing countries with similar economic and technological levels to actively implement more stringent environmental policies in the context of trade openness. Image 108550 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Most existing studies on environmental regulations and the location dynamics of pollution-intensive industries regard new environmental procedures as an incremental development process, and neglect the influence of sudden changes in environmental regulations triggered by a pollution crisis. Using the drinking water crisis in the Taihu Lake Watershed (TLW) in 2007 as an example, this paper examines the spatial behavior of pollution-intensive firms across the TLW, and pays special attention to the regional differences in the effectiveness of enforcing environmental regulations. We find that the pollution haven hypothesis works efficiently in the short term after an unexpected pollution crisis because of the immediate strengthening of environmental regulations by local governments under pressure from the central government and the public. However, the effect of strict environmental policies was compromised by differences in the effectiveness of policy enforcement across the watershed. Specifically, when other regions (for example, Huzhou) were compared with Wuxi (the site of the crisis in the present study), these regions were found to be relatively insensitive to the effects of the pollution incidents and the environmental regulations that were triggered. Highlights • This paper examines spatial behaviors of pollution-intensive firms across the Taihu Lake watershed in response to the water crisis. • The paper pays special attention to the regional difference in enforcement effectiveness of environmental regulations. • Pollution haven hypothesis works efficiently in the short run. • The effect of stringent environmental policies was compromised by differences in policy enforcement effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical studies of pollution haven hypothesis predict that differentiated environmental regulation policies will result in inter-country relocation of polluting industries. This paper investigates pollution haven hypothesis at domestic level in China. Using panel data of 30 provincial level regions for the period 2004 to 2013, this paper empirically examines to what extent multiple environmental policies affect intra-country relocation of polluting industries in China. It is found that the implementation of both economic policy instrument like pollution discharge fee and public participation like letter complaints on environmental problems encourages industrial relocation, whereas the implementation of environmental legal policy instrument like laws, regulations and rules prevents polluting industries from relocating to other regions. It is also found that the relocation effect of environmental policies varies with industrial characteristics. Compared with water pollution-intensive industry, air pollution-intensive industry dominated by stated-owned capitals are insensitive to legal policy instruments. These findings suggest that the validity of pollution haven hypothesis is jointly associated with the type of environmental policy as well as industrial characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]