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• Quantifying the impact of peer pressure on environmental improvements among local governments in China. • Investigating cities ' reaction to declining air quality rankings through regression discontinuity design. • Demonstrating the efficacy of political incentives in combating pollution and the catalytic effect of rankings on policy action. • Assessing the benefits resulting from air pollution reductions using an exposure response function. This paper estimates the impact of peer governmental pressure on air quality using a regression discontinuity design inherent in China's air quality ranking system. Because air quality rankings are important for political evaluations, local officials who witnessed a decline in air quality ranking are motivated to enforce more stringent environmental standards compared to their counterparts with increased rankings. By exploiting this regulatory discontinuity with monthly air quality ranking data from 2012 to 2020 of 169 cities, we find that cities experiencing a lower air quality ranking in the current month compared to the previous month exhibit a subsequent improvement in air quality during the following month, as evidenced by decreased pollutant concentrations. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that in cities where pollutant rankings decline more sharply, officials are less likely to encounter fewer promotion opportunities. Importantly, we observe that the discontinuity in individual pollutant concentrations is not solely influenced by their respective rankings but is also impacted by the overall A ir Q uality I ndex (AQI) ranking. Linking the reduction in air pollutants concentration with the economic benefits, a back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates the decrease in premature deaths due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases amounts to approximately 200 thousand, resulting in an associated economic saving of more than 600 billion Chinese yuan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent evidence suggests that exposure to air pollution adversely impacts health outcomes, cognitive function, and labor productivity, however, less is known about the effect of air pollution exposure on social conflicts. Using daily air pollution, we study the effect of exposure to air pollution on social conflicts. For identification strategies, we estimate models with high-dimensional fixed effects and two instrumental variables using atmospheric inversions and wind patterns as exogenous shocks to local pollution. Our findings suggest a positive impact of air pollution on social conflicts, and the magnitude is larger with more severe pollution exposure. Moreover, the significant differences exist between social conflicts occurring in different workplaces, and those occurring at development levels, both of which are related to the extent of pollution exposure. Finally, taking lottery sales as a proxy for risk preference to investigate the potential mechanisms, we show that the increased social conflicts alone with pollution exposure may be attributed to the rising risk preference. This provides indirect support for a plausible channel through which air pollution results in behavioral and social outcomes. The results are robust to alternative specifications and placebos. The findings suggest that reducing air pollution gains the unintended consequence of preventing social conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emissions from heavy urban traffic have been the most abundant components of urban air pollution in China. Compared to the fast increasing consumption of automobile, the growth rate of urban traffic infrastructure investment (UTII) is relative low. It is a controversial issue for the policymaker whether promoting the UTII could make a positive impact on reducing air pollution or not. This study is designed to test the relations between the UTII and air quality, using the data of 83 cities from 2000 to 2012. Based on the empirical results from the fixed effect model and dynamic panel data model, increasing the UTII could generally mitigate the air pollution, but the long-run and short-run effects are significantly different. In the short run, the UTII effect on air quality is −0.02, since the urban traffic infrastructure construction might cause more detours and road blockages, which would enhance the fine-particle emissions of the low-speed traffic. In contrast, the UTII could widen the roads and make the traffic system more accessible in the long run, so the estimated positive effect is about 0.05. The robustness tests about different regions and scales of cities are conducted. Policy suggestions are further recommended to reduce air pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic-related air pollution has become an urgent problem in many developing countries with rapid industrialization and urbanization. Traffic infrastructure construction, especially road reconstruction, is a prominent instrument of improving the road capacity and then affecting air quality. We employ the road area as the proxy variable of road infrastructure construction and further divide the road reconstruction pattern into lengthening pattern and widening pattern, respectively to evaluate the impact on urban air quality. The empirical result shows that the coefficient of road infrastructure construction represented by the road area is between −0.0818 and −0.0905, which means increasing road area has an emission-alleviating effect on air pollution. Moreover, we also find that the effect of road lengthening on air quality is better than road widening in the eastern China, but the improvement of road widening in the Central and Western China is better than the road lengthening. The result provides a valuable reference for policy recommendations on urban road infrastructure planning to improve air quality. • An empirical study is conducted to explore the effect of road construction. • Air pollution index is selected as the dependent variable to measure urban air quality. • An increase in road area can improve air quality. • Two road construction methods both have air pollution-reducing effect. • In the eastern cities, road lengthening is more effective in improving air quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]