Impact of environmental regulations on the policy implementation capacity of village-level river chiefs
The insufficient policy implementation capacity of village-level river chiefs is a major reason for the 'last mile' dilemma faced by environmental governance of rivers and lakes in village areas,which has caused serious negative impacts.As a useful supple-ment to address deficiencies in the market mechanism,environmental regulations have become a key variable affecting the behavior of village-level river chiefs and have an important impact on their policy implementation capacity.Based on micro survey data from 141 villages in 7 provinces (Jiangsu,Zhejiang,Hebei,Hubei,Anhui,Shaanxi,and Ningxia),this paper took village-level river chiefs as the research object,measuring the intensity of environmental regulations from their perspective and exploring the impact of these regula-tions on their policy implementation capacity through theoretical analysis and empirical research.The results showed that:① Environ-mental regulations and their sub-dimensions had a significant positive impact on the policy implementation capacity of village-level riv-er chiefs.② Heterogeneity analysis at the village level revealed that the impact of environmental regulations was more pronounced in villages with a shorter establishment time and a larger number of non-governmental river chiefs.Individual-level heterogeneity showed that the impact was more evident among village-level river chiefs in the low-education group,and the impact was also more evident among village-level river chiefs in the people's congress representative group.③ Mechanism analysis showed that environmental litera-cy and cooperation level played a mediating effect on the relationship between environmental regulations and the policy implementation capacity of village-level river chiefs.④ The nonlinear test revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between environmental regula-tions and the policy implementation capacity of village-level river chiefs,indicating that when environmental regulations exceeded a cer-tain level,excessive regulations could weaken the policy implementation capacity of village-level river chiefs.Based on these findings,this paper puts forward countermeasures and suggestions from the aspects of scientifically and rationally formulating regulatory require-ments,endowing village-level river chiefs with better governance resources,paying attention to the mediating role of environmental liter-acy and cooperation level,maintaining the principle of moderation,and avoiding the 'pampered' and 'prohibitive' environmental regu-lations,aiming to provide insights for enhancing the policy implementation capacity of village-level river chiefs,and a theoretical and practical basis for realizing the river and lake management goals of 'clear rivers,clean water,green banks,and beautiful scenery.'
environmental regulationvillage-level river chiefpolicy implementation capacityriver chief system
万方数据
维普
