The Effect of Governance on Industrial Wastewater Pollution in China

Abstract

Water pollution not only aggravates the deterioration of the ecological environment and endanger human health, but also has a significantly negative impact on economic growth and social development. It is crucial to investigate the relationship between industrial wastewater governance and industrial wastewater pollution on the path to reduce water pollution. In this paper, we studied whether industrial wastewater governance affected industrial wastewater pollution using the panel fixed effect model and system generalized moment estimation model (SYS-GMM) with the panel data of 30 provinces from 2005 to 2020 in China. This is the only empirical analysis of the relationship between industrial wastewater governance and industrial wastewater pollution. We proxied industrial wastewater pollution by organic pollutants and inorganic pollutants and measured the per capita investment in industrial wastewater governance. The results shed light on the positive correlation between the per capita investment in industrial wastewater governance and industrial wastewater pollution. The increase in per capita investment in industrial wastewater governance promoted the increase of pollutant emissions from industrial wastewater. The estimation also indicated that there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between per capita GDP and inorganic /organic pollutants in industrial wastewater. Our empirical research shows that it is necessary to increase investment in industrial wastewater treatment and optimize the investment structure of environmental treatment, so as to pave the way for the comprehensive utilization of a variety of environmental treatment solutions.