Corruption, Economic Development and Haze Pollution: Evidence from 139 Global Countries

Abstract

Long-term exposure to haze pollution will not only affect citizens’ health and shorten their life expectancy, but also cause unpredictable economic losses. In addition, it has become the focus of worldwide concern whether and how institutional quality affects haze pollution. In this study, we explored the impacts of political corruption on haze pollution in 139 global countries. We employed a geographical detector model to identify the driving factors of spatial differentiation in global haze pollution. In addition, corruption degree and per capita gross domestic production (GDP) were used as threshold variables to analyze whether there is a nonlinear relationship between corruption and haze pollution. The main results are as follows. (1) The corruption perception index (CPI) was negatively correlated with haze pollution and had a strong and stable explanatory power for the heterogeneity of haze pollution. Besides, the degree of corruption had a significant triple threshold effect on haze pollution. When the CPI crossed the double threshold value, strengthening institutional quality could inhibit haze pollution. (2) Per capita GDP significantly determined how institutional quality exerted an effect on haze pollution, which was also a key factor affecting spatial heterogeneity of PM2.5 concentration. In high-income countries, choosing a more honest ruling party could substantially reduce haze pollution, while in low-income countries, an incompetent government could increase the degree of haze pollution. (3) The “Matthew effect” was manifested in our study. It indicated that the higher was the level of economic development, the lower was the severity of haze pollution. Based on these results, we state that policy makers cannot simply alleviate haze pollution through anti-corruption construction. For low-income countries, ensuring economic growth is the prerequisite for the substantial alleviation of haze pollution. On the contrary, high-income countries should pay more attention to the integrity of government institutions and strengthen the awareness of anti-corruption.