Reflection on the joint prevention and control of air pollution from the perspective of environmental justice-insights from a two-stage dynamic game model

Abstract

The practices of the joint prevention and control of air pollution (JPCAP) present two disadvantages: the low enthusiasm of governance subjects and an unsatisfactory governance effect. Revealing the existing problems and exploring their causes has been a key issue for promoting JPCAP. Given this, we especially establish a two-stage dynamic game model for air pollution control to explore the advantages and dilemmas of JPCAP by analyzing changes in environmental tax rate and social welfare. The results show that the unfair distribution of social welfare among cities is a key reason for the unsatisfactory effect of JPCAP. Therefore, we improve JPCAP by considering both production-oriented and consumption-oriented pollutions based on environmental justice. In the improved JPCAP mode, the social welfare of each city is higher than that of non-joint control of air pollution (NJCAP), in which the increased degree is positively related to the city's negotiation ability. In addition, the consumption tax rate is negatively correlated with the negotiation ability of the central city and the trade transfer coefficient. This study not only provides a theoretical and methodological reference for formulating effective planning and compensation scheme for JPCAP but also can be extended to the practice and theoretical analysis of other cross-regional public issues.

Keywords: Air pollution control; Environmental justice; Regional air pollution; Two-stage dynamic game.