China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2018 | Page 90

Subjective and Objective Air Quality in Urban China
响公民对空气质量的看法进行了探索。在对各种混杂变量进行控制后 , 笔者发现主观空气质量与客观空气质量呈正相关 , 而环境透明度对此关系有负向调节作用。该项研究结果对环境政策、政府绩效衡量和透明度产生了重大的理论和实践意义。
关键词 : 环境污染 , 空气质量 , 中国 , 主观绩效衡量 , 政府透明度
Introduction
Due to fast industrialization
and sweeping urbanization in
China, environmental pollutions
have been jeopardizing China’s
economic and biological sustainability.
Environmental pollutions have ignited
public outcry and social unrest, which
may undermine the ruling party’s regime
support and legitimacy. Citizen’s
political actions related to environmental
degradation are largely determined
by their perceptions of environmental
pollutions, which are subjective and socially
constructed. Existing studies on
air pollution in China in social sciences,
however, are mainly conducted by ecologists
and economists, considering air
pollution as independent variables and
using objective air quality indicators
from government archives to examine
its impacts on public health, happiness,
life satisfaction, and political actions
such as social protest and emigration
(e.g., Qin and Zhu 2018; Smyth, Mishra,
and Qian 2008; Wang and Cheng 2017).
With few exceptions (Li and Xue 2016;
Shi 2015), studies on perceived environmental
pollution in China are lacking.
Citizens’ perceptions of air
quality are a social and psychological
construct, jointly influenced by environmental
pollution and information
availability. The objective measurement
and subjective perception of air pollution
are conceptually different and empirically
discernable, and it is of theoretical
relevance and policy importance
to examine the discrepancies between
subjective and objective environmental
quality. A recent study reveals that perceived
government’s efforts in addressing
environment issues significantly
influence residents’ environmental perceptions
in a coal-mining region in
northern China. Controlling for government
efforts, however, objective environmental
indicators do not significantly
impact subjective environmental
perceptions (Shi 2015).
In this study, we focus on one of
the government efforts in addressing
environmental pollution, information
transparency. Environment transparency
is considered as an essential part
of global environmental governance
(Gupta 2010). It is believed that environmental
transparency can protect
individuals from environmental harms,
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