Environmental Sustainability assessment 2.0: The value of social media data for determining the emotional responses of people to river pollution—A case study of Weibo (Chinese Twitter)

Urban river pollution has brought about serious challenges to residents in terms of bodily health and emotional well-being. Based on a social media platform, Chinese Twitter (Weibo), this paper proposes a research framework to investigate the emotional responses of people according to four dimensions: trends, seasons, space and dynamics (TSSD). This study presents several important findings. First, negative responses were much more common than positive ones across all seasons, 22.8% and 9.2%, respectively, which means that river pollution adversely affects residents' well-being in general. Second, negative responses are likely related to local garbage piles, landslides, heavy rains, traffic jams, and demolition, while positive reactions are likely related to beautiful weather or spending time with family members. Third, summer and winter are more likely to induce negative emotions than spring and autumn, with the negative index of summer or winter approaching 80%. This study confirmed that social media data are of great value in measuring the behaviors and emotional responses of humans to their surrounding environment.     

Disentangling economic crisis effects from environmental regulation effects: Implications for sustainable development

With climate change becoming more severe, policy makers must impose environmental regulations that will lead firms to adopt sustainable corporate models. According to the Porter hypothesis, environmental regulation can favour the implementation of business strategies that improve economic and environmental performances. In this study, we examine how one such form of regulation, the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), impacts firm performance, and we subsequently widen the examination beyond the regulation to evaluate an economic crisis which could potentially confound regulation effects. We estimate a panel model with time- and firm-fixed effects for different subsamples that disentangle the effect of the EU ETS policy from the 2008 economic crisis. The results indicate that the EU ETS policy in its third phase can activate the Porter hypothesis and is effective in fuelling the implementation of sustainable corporate models by firms. However, we also find that the economic crisis neutralises the effects of the regulation on firm performance, precluding the triggering of the Porter hypothesis in severely affected firms.     

Foreign direct investment and air pollution in Asian countries: does institutional quality matter?

This paper empirically studies how foreign direct investment (FDI) affects air pollution, and how this effect depends on institutional quality. By using a panel data for 19 developing Asian countries over the period of 2002–2015, we find that FDI inflows initially increase air pollution in Asia, and the institutional quality improvement helps reduce this effect until the institutional quality achieves a threshold, then beyond this threshold, FDI reduces air pollution. The findings indicate that the pollution haven hypothesis and the pollution halo hypothesis are not contradictory when the institutional quality is taken into consideration.     

Health returns to modern heating: evidence from China

This study analyses the health effects of modern heating, using China’s centralized home heating infrastructure as a natural experiment. The underlying health mechanism is that the recipients of modern heating do not need to rely on traditional fuels to heat their homes and thus suffer from less exposure to indoor air pollution. Furthermore, the improved quality of heating leads to health improvements. This article exploits spatial and time variation in the implementation of China’s centralized heating program, utilizing a difference-in-difference framework. Spatial variation takes the form of a discrete geographical cut-off between regions that receive centralized home heating and those that do not. Results show that areas with centralized heating have a 0.13% decrease in perinatal deaths and a decrease of 1.17% in the proportion of low-birth-weight infants. This translates into about 7000 fewer deaths and about 60,000 fewer low-birth-weight infants each year. Hence, there are enormous health benefits to the public provision of modern heat as a substitute for traditional heating methods, which are shown to be injurious to early-life health. These results strongly suggest that policymakers in developing countries should consider promoting cleaner heating methods.     

Optimal fiscal policy with environmental tax and pollution abatement spending in a model with utility-enhancing environmental quality: lessons from Bulgaria

This paper characterized optimal fiscal policy in the presence of pollution, and evaluated it relative to the observed one in Bulgaria. To this end, a dynamic general-equilibrium model is calibrated to Bulgarian data. The main findings are: (i) The optimal steady-state income tax rate is zero; (ii) the benevolent Ramsey planner provides 20% higher utility-enhancing environmental quality; (iii) the optimal level of carbon taxes is almost three times higher, and the optimal level of abatement spending is six times higher; (iv) the optimal steady-state consumption tax is twice lower.     

Commuting in Happyville: Taxation with interjurisdictional commuting and pollution

This paper presents a spatial model of tax competition in an asymmetric duocentric city with traffic‐related pollution. Jurisdictions differ in productivity and both wage or commuting and head taxes are applied. Residential location is given, but agents can choose their workplace. We show that the incentive for the high productive jurisdiction to export the tax burden by attracting cross‐commuters is reduced by the resulting pollution import; this affects the welfare impacts of tax competition. The possibility that households may misperceive their exposure to pollution is explored and its impact of fiscal competition is analyzed. When households are very optimistic about their exposure, aggregate welfare may be higher than in the first best.     

Subjective probabilistic expectations,household air pollution,and health: Evidence from cooking fuel use patterns in West Bengal,India

An increasing number of empirical studies have investigated the determinants of cooking fuel choice in developing countries, where health risks from household air pollution are one of the most important issues. We contribute to this stream of literature by examining individuals’ subjective probabilistic expectations about health risks when using different types of fuel and their role in cooking fuel usage patterns. We also explore how these patterns, in turn, are associated with health status. Using data collected from 557 rural Indian households, we find that subjective probabilistic expectations of becoming sick from dirty fuel usage are negatively and significantly associated with the fraction of days of dirty fuel usage in households. Concurrently, dirty fuel usage and self-reported health status of the individual being sick are also significantly correlated. We then conduct a policy simulation of information provision regarding the health risks of dirty fuel usage. Our simulation demonstrates that although the provision of information results in statistically significant changes in households’ cooking fuel usage patterns and in individuals’ health status, these changes may be small in size.     

利用SPAMS分析保山市细颗粒物的理化特征及来源

为了改善保山市的大气环境质量、预防细颗粒物污染,使用单颗粒气溶胶质谱仪分析了大气中PM_(2.5)的化学组分、粒径分布及来源。分析结果表明,采集到的大气颗粒物主要分为7类:元素碳(EC)、混合碳(ECOC)、有机碳(OC)、高分子有机碳(HOC)、富钾(K-rich)、矿物质(KWZ)和左旋葡聚糖(LEV)颗粒;颗粒类型以有机碳和元素碳颗粒为主,分别占到电离颗粒总数的27.8%和20.3%;不同类型颗粒粒径分布差异性较大。源解析结果表明,机动车尾气和燃煤源是主要的颗粒物贡献源,二者贡献率在60%以上;其次为扬尘源,贡献率为15%左右;机动车尾气为工作日的颗粒物首要贡献源,燃煤源为非工作日的首要来源;各类污染源贡献率变化具有一定周期性。研究结果不仅明晰了保山市大气颗粒物的来源,还可为保山市的大气污染防治决策提供数据参考。     

The measurement of risk perceptions: the case of smoking

Climate change is a threat to human health and life, both now and in the future. Despite this, studies show that the public typically do not consider the issue a priority concern or a direct, personal threat. Furthermore, few are taking any preventive or protective action. Previous studies identify direct experience as a major influence on risk perception, learning and action. Drawing on such evidence, this paper focuses on the intangibility of climate change as a key impediment to personal engagement and explores whether relevant experiences of flooding and air pollution influence individuals' knowledge, attitudes, risk perception and behavioural responses to climate change. Perhaps surprisingly, interviews and a survey conducted in the south of England indicate flood victims differ very little from other participants in their understanding of and responses to climate change, but that experience of air pollution does significantly affect perceptions of and behavioural responses to climate change. Air pollution victims are no more likely to cite pollution as a cause of climate change than non‐victims; but they do have higher pro‐environmental values. Respondents with these values are significantly more likely to consider climate change a salient risk and to take action in response to it. Therefore the relationship between air pollution experience and responses to climate change may be indirect and mediated by environmental values. The paper concludes by highlighting implications of this research for developing climate change policies and strategies for public engagement.