Public participation, government regulation and environment pollutions in china: a causality analysis using regional panel data

Utilizing the regional data of China covering 29 provinces and municipalities during 1990-2009, we outline a systematic approach to investigate the relations among public participation, government regulation and environment pollutions. Results show that government regulation influences environment pollutions while environment pollutions have no influence on government regulation in the short term. Besides, environment pollutions and public participation have no influence on each other. In the long term, it exists the Granger causality among public participation, government regulation and environment pollutions. Our results also show that improving the public participation's ability in environmental protection and strengthening government regulation's intensity are the basic measures to improve China's environment in the long run.