China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2018 | Page 91

China Policy Journal
enhance environmental enforcement,
and facilitate social learning (Li and
Li 2012). Environmental transparency
is one of the most important policy
tools the central government is using to
monitor and evaluate the performance
of local governments in environmental
protection so as to enforce environment
laws and regulations.
Given the importance of subjective
measures of public services and
government performance in public administration
research (Schachter 2010;
Shingler, Van Loon, and Alter 2008), we
aim to examine two research questions
with significant theoretical and practical
implications:
(1) To what extent do people’s perceptions
of air quality reflect the authentic
air quality measured by government
hard data in China?
(2) What policy instruments government
can take to influence people’s
perceptions of air pollution?
In this study, we use data from
various sources (nationwide citizen survey,
government statistics, and external
assessments) and employ a multilevel
modeling (MLM) strategy to empirically
explore the antecedents of citizens’
perceptions of air quality. Specifically,
we examine to what extent objective air
quality and environmental information
availability (transparency) jointly affect
citizens’ perceptions of air quality. After
controlling for a variety of confounding
variables, we find that subjective air
quality is positively related to objective
air quality and environmental transparency
negatively moderates this relationship.
The findings generate significant
theoretical and practical implications
for environmental policy, government
performance measurement, and transparency.
The remainder of this article is
structured as follows. First, we discuss
the relationship between objective air
pollution and subjective perceptions
of air quality. Second, we review the
environmental transparency literature,
discussing how environmental transparency
in China would influence subjective
air pollution. Third, we report
our data collection and research methods.
Fourth, we present and discuss our
findings. Lastly, we conclude with theoretical
and policy implications, limitations,
and future research avenues.
Context
Air Pollution in China
Since China’s “Reform and Openup”
policy in the late 1970s, China
has achieved stunning economic
achievement. In 2010, China overtakes
Japan as World’s No. 2 economy. China
is also experiencing unprecedented
urbanization. In 2015, more than 55.6
percent of Chinese lived in urban area
(CIA World Factbook 2017). It is no
doubt that economic development and
urbanization have drastically improved
Chinese people’s economic income and
quality of life. However, similar to other
developing countries such as India,
China is also experiencing devastating
environmental pollutions (Albert and
Xu 2016). China has 16 of the world’s 20
most polluted cities (World Bank 2007),
and environmental pollutions have al-
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