執法品質對細懸浮微粒污染物濃度的門檻效果：縱橫資料分析

Abstract

Globally, 91% of the world’s population lives in places where air quality exceeds the World Health Organization guideline limit. Dubbed as the ‘invisible killer’, air pollution claims the lives of 7 million people annually. The most hazardous of pollutants are particulate matter that are less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5). In this study, panel threshold models are used to explore the effects of economic performance and enforcement quality on PM2.5 for 118 countries spanning a period of 2001 to 2013. Controlling for economic factors, social, energy and industrial structures, this study found that enforcement quality is significantly effective in mitigating particulate pollution only when a certain threshold has been achieved. Therefore, better enforcement quality would bring about direct results in the mitigation of particulate pollution. Economic performance was found to display both U-shape curve and inverted U-shape EKC at different levels of enforcement quality. This study shows that the effect of foreign direct investment vary depending on enforcement quality. Thus, both the pollution haven and pollution halo hypothesis are not contradictory.