Volume 13: Low Carbon Cities and Urban Energy Systems: Part II

Regulatory Effect of Improving Environmental Information Disclosure on Environmental Tax: From the Perspectives of Time and Industry Heterogeneity Jinzhu Zhang, Yu Liu, Meifang Zhou, Boyang Chen, Wei Zhang

Abstract

As a formal means of environmental regulation, environmental tax receives extensive attention from scholars for its emission reduction effect and economic impact. However, few studies have focused on the regulatory effect and impact mechanism of Environmental Information Disclosure (EID) and other informal environmental regulatory methods, especially the heterogeneity of such regulatory effect at the time and industry level. Therefore, based on China input-output tables and pollutant emission data of 139 sectors in 2012, this paper constructed China environmental Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model for empirical test. Studies have shown that the improvement of EID has a “double dividend” regulatory effect on emission reduction and economic impact of environmental tax, but this effect has obvious time and industry heterogeneity. Specifically, the long-run economic stimulus effect of EID improvement (0.087%) is greater than that of the short-run (0.037%), while the long-run enhanced effect of EID on exhaust emission reduction (SO2 -0.015%；NOX -0.014%) is less than that in the short-run (SO2 -0.081%；NOX -0.076%). In terms of the comparisons between the two, in the short-run, the enhanced effect of EID on environmental tax’s emission reduction is greater than its effect on economic improvement. While in the long run, the effect on the former is less than its effect on the latter. Meanwhile, the improvement of EID has a weaking effect on reducing wastewater discharge reduction of environmental tax. From the industry perspective, the improvement of EID quality can drive the output growth of the industry in the short run and long run by 64% and 93% respectively. Nonetheless, there exists significant non-uniformity. Among them, production of capital-intensive investment products and its upstream industries have increased emissions when output has expanded significantly, while the output of labor-intensive and export-oriented industries have suffered due to factor prices that have been pushed up. It is worth noting that the improvement of EID quality can stimulate the energy consumption structure to shift from high-emission coal towards clean energy products in the long run. This research can provide references for objectively understanding the complementary role of informal environmental regulation to formal environmental regulation, and promote the construction of a modern environmental governance system with multi-party co-governance.

Keywords environmental information disclosure (EID), environmental tax, regulatory effect, time and industry heterogeneity, CGE model