Does national air quality monitoring reduce local air pollution? The case of PM2.5 for China

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) has become a major pressing challenge for China and remains a concern of its central government. This paper draws on a natural experiment generated by the National Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Network (NAAQMN) program in China to explore whether national air quality monitoring reduces local air pollution. In this study, we use a city-level dataset for 4200 Chinese cities covering 2001–2015 and a difference-in-differences (DID) assessment design to assess the impact of the NAAQMN program on local PM2.5 emissions in China. The results suggest that the NAAQMN program significantly reduces the local PM2.5 concentrations by 1.325 mg/m3, and each additional NAAQMN program will cause a decrease of 0.154 mg/m3 in the local PM2.5 concentrations. Furthermore, we determine the heterogeneous impacts of the NAAQMN program on local PM2.5 emission levels through the local government leaders’ characteristics, PM2.5 emission levels, and economic development levels. In addition, a mediation effect is found between the NAAQMN program and local PM2.5 emissions through the efficiency of environmental governance. The Chinese government should continue to promote the implementation of the NAAQMN program by promoting the NAAQMN program to the county and rural areas as well as adding the sites of the NAAQMN program in the existing cities. Also, during the process of promoting the NAAQMN program, sufficient differentiation in policies should be developed for different cities.