Does Information Disclosure Mitigate Air Pollution? Evidence from China

From 2013 to 2015, China established nationwide air quality monitoring stations, beginning to release real-time air pollution information to the public. This policy of releasing air pollution information provides access to the government and the public so that they can supervise air quality. Under this background, we study the effect of information disclosure on air pollution in prefecture-level cities. The results show that information disclosure significantly decreases the concentrations of PM 10 , PM 2.5 and NO 2 ; however, it has no significant effect on CO, SO 2 and O 3 concentrations. Among these pollutants, PM 10 , PM 2.5 and NO 2 are the most dominant, together accounting for 95.33% of primary pollutants. Through mechanism analysis, we find that information disclosure increases environmental investments, stimulates government supervision, and triggers industrial structure adjustment. Additionally, we prove that the political promotion incentive affects the effectiveness of information disclosure