Based on the data of 120 environmental protection major cities in China from 2008 to 2019,this paper empirically tests whether the implementation of government environmental responsibility has ef-fectively promoted the improvement of environmental quality and analyzes its impact mechanism.The re-sults show that the implementation of government environmental responsibility has played a significant role in promoting the improvement of environmental quality.Green technology innovation and industrial struc-ture optimization play an intermediary role in this process.From the perspective of different dimensions,compared with the responsibility of ecological environment governance,the responsibility of ecological en-vironment supervision and the responsibility of ecological multi-governance have a more significant effect on the improvement of environmental quality;compared with smoke(powder)dust,the government envi-ronmental responsibility performance has a more significant emission reduction effect on other pollutants.Heterogeneity analysis shows that in areas with high proportion of fiscal expenditure on science and tech-nology and coal consumption,the environmental improvement effect of government environmental respon-sibility is more significant.
government environmental responsibilityenvironmental qualityindustrial structure opti-mizationgreen technology innovation