The impact of the policy and behavior of public participation on environmental governance performance: Empirical analysis based on provincial panel data in China

The problem of environmental pollution becomes serious along with the advancement of urbanization in China. The public is paying more and more attention to environmental governance. The Chinese government has promulgated and implemented policies to ensure public participation in environmental governance. Based on Chinese provincial data from 2006 to 2014, this study analyzes the problem from the aspect of the public's own living environment and investigates the interaction between public participation behavior and policy. The empirical results show that public environmental participation behavior measured by the number of complaint letter has no impact on the public's own living environment, while the number of proposals from members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) does. Moreover, the public participation policy plays a significant role in improving environmental governance. In addition, the impact of public participation policy and proposals on environmental governance is mutually replaceable. This may be due to the proposals are different from ordinary letters. We recommend that the government should adopt the proposals from CPPCC when formulating policies.