China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2018 | Page 96

Subjective and Objective Air Quality in Urban China
and social media (Liu, Dong, and Wang
2011). Therefore, visible and sensible
experience of residents is based on but
not equivalent to the objective level of
air quality.
Hadrich and Wolf (2011) studied
the environmental pollution by Michigan’s
livestock operations and citizen
complains. They found that compared
with surface water pollution, odor pollution
was more difficult to be verified.
In China, although after the 2013
pandemic air pollution in Beijing, the
municipal government had promised
to clean the air, in the summer of 2016
local dwellers’ complaints on the hovering
haze raged the social media, blaming
government’s incompetence and inaction.
However, according to objective
scientific data, air quality in Beijing has
significantly improved over years. In
order to establish the significant relationship
between objective and subjective
air quality, we need empirical studies
based on solid data, representative
sample, and rigorous research design.
Although there are no empirical studies
specifically testing the relationship,
some research on citizen environmental
complaints and environmental pollution
found that citizens’ complaints
are significantly related to air pollution
(Dasgupta and Wheeler 1997; Dong et
al. 2011). Therefore, we develop the first
hypothesis as below.
Hypothesis 1: Subjective air quality significantly
correlates with objective air
quality.
The Moderating Effect of
Environmental Transparency
In addition to the influence of objective
air pollution, subjective air pollution
could also be affected by their
expectation, knowledge, information
availability, and political attitudes,
which are influenced by environmental
transparency. Transparency refers
to the availability and usability of government
information to the public, and
it is subtly different from openness and
information disclosure (Wu, Ma, and
Yu 2017). Openness means the disclosure
of government information, which
might not be equivalent to transparency.
For instance, government may
discretionarily and selectively disclose
some information while keep others
(e.g., politically sensitive data) opaque.
Government may also purposely distort
and manipulate the information
disclosed to the public. Transparency,
in contrast, means government information
is not only disclosed and available
to the public, but also citizens can
access, understand, interpret, and use
the information for private or public
purposes (Fung, Graham, and Weil
2007).
Transparency is not only about
the disclosure and use of government
information, but also reflects the motivations
and capacities of the government
in addressing air pollution.
Given the professionalism of air quality
monitoring, the information on air
quality is to some extent controlled by
the government. Whether citizens can
get access to and utilize this information
partially depends on government
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