Evaluating public participation impact on environmental protection and ecological efficiency in China: Evidence from PITI disclosure

The industrial pollution caused by China's unprecedent economic expansion seriously imperils public health, giving rise to public's high demand for better environmental quality. The paper employs the difference-in-differences (DID) methodology to conduct a quasi-natural experiment based on the Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI) to evaluate the public participation impact on pollution emissions reduction and environment technology efficiency. The results show that PITI information disclosure has a positive influence on pollution emissions reduction, however, some existing literatures may overstate the effect of public participation on environment improvement in China, the empirical results show that government administrative measures still play essential role at current stage. The paper also finds that the influence of public participation exists in eastern China rather than in central and western China. In addition, the results of using environment technology efficiency as outcome variable show insignificant effect, but eastern China has positive environment technology efficiency, suggesting that economic development may increase enterprise technological input, hence achieving mutually beneficial achievements of economy and ecological efficiency.