Assessing impacts and determinants of China's environmental protection tax on improving air quality at provincial...

Facing severe PM_2.5 pollution, China has adopted a series of clean air policies since 2013, but PM_2.5 concentrations in China remain serious. Weighing both sustainable development and environmental protection, the Environmental Protection Tax Law was implemented in 2018 in China. This research employed a Bayesian space-time model to identify the impacts of the environmental protection tax on PM_2.5 pollution (IEPTPM_2.5P) at the provincial level in 2018 in China, combining remotely sensed and in-situ monitoring data. Then the influence factors of the IEPTPM_2.5P was investigated using a Bayesian LASSO regression model. Results indicate that the IEPTPM_2.5P resulted in a decreasing trend of annual PM_2.5 concentrations in 31 provinces. The spatial pattern of the IEPTPM_2.5P presented a distinct geographical feature. The highest five IEPTPM_2.5P occurred in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Shandong, and Hebei, and the corresponding values were -1.81, -1.79, -1.52, -1.51, and -1.47 μg/m³ per year, respectively. Tourism output value associated negatively with the IEPTPM_2.5P, and the other five variables associated positively with the IEPTPM_2.5P. The urbanisation rate and relief amplitude were the top two influencing factors, with contributions of 36.3% and 19.3%, respectively. The IEPTPM_2.5P increased 0.0141 μg/m³ per year (95% credibility interval (CI): 0.0013, 0.0259) if the urbanisation rate increased one percentage point. The influencing contributions and magnitudes of the tax rate for air pollutants and the environmental tax revenue are 9.6% and 12.1%, 0.0016 (95% CI:-0.0038, 0.0076) and 0.0108 (95% CI:-0.0188, 0.0412) μg/m³ per year, respectively.