China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2018 | Page 107

China Policy Journal
tion in urban China, central and local
governments have been endeavoring in
spending more resources in environmental
regulations. Despite the government
proclaims that air quality has
been steadily improving, citizens do
not resonate and buy, generating an enlarging
gap between government rhetoric
and citizen perceptions. Given the
lingering air pollution, citizens may be
hopeless of and habituate themselves to
air pollution (Menz 2011), because it
has been an essential part of their lives
(Johnson et al. 2017). How to mitigate
citizens’ discontent with air pollution?
Our findings suggest that government
should be more transparent in disclosing
information and engaging the public,
which helps to retain social legitimacy
and support.
Information-based policy instrument
is among lots of policy instruments
available to policy-makers,
and incentive-based and mandatory
instruments are equivalently and even
more powerful in improving environmental
performance. Despite information-based
instrument is not the most
powerful policy instrument, it is a
promising and cost-efficient one. Lots
of recent developments in environmental
governance use information
disclosure and transparency to nudge
residents and industrial enterprises to
reduce environmental pollution. It is
thus important to highlight the value of
information-based policy instruments
in improving air quality, both objectively
and subjectively.
Environmental transparency
may be undermined by giant industrial
enterprises due to interest entrenchment
(Lorentzen, Landry, and Yasuda
2014), and government should leverage
the power of social accountability and
citizen participation. The ubiquitous
data manipulation must be addressed
by introducing third-party engagement,
since it is common to find interrupted
points or discontinuities of air
quality monitoring, especially when air
pollution is heavy. It is also relevant to
expand the comprehensiveness of coverage
and the density of monitoring stations,
particularly in rural areas, which
help citizens more precisely perceive
and respond to air pollution.
The limitations of the study are
threefold, and we hope future studies
can replicate and extend our findings.
First, the measurements of our key
variables could be improved in future
research. The measurement of subjective
air quality is based on a single
item from a national citizen survey,
and we will address the issue in our
future study. Although air quality is
highly sensible and easier to be detected
and felt, a subjective AQI consisting
of multiple questions would be better.
Citizens’ perceptions and satisfaction
are conceptually different, and we cannot
distinguish their fine-grained differences
due to data limitations. Our
measurement of objective air quality
could also be improved by using more
recent data, since the Chinese government
revised the national Ambient Air
Quality Standards and included the
concentration level of PM 2.5
in 2013.
It should be noted that information
disclosure is different from information
availability or access, and we use
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