Causality analysis of public participation, government regulation and environment pollutions using regional panel data

Utilizing the regional data of China covering 29 provinces and municipalities during 1990-2009, this article outlines a systematic approach to investigate the relations between public participation, government regulation and environment pollutions. Results show that government regulation influences environment pollutions while environment pollutions have no influence on government regulation in the short term. Besides, environment pollutions and public participation have no influence on each other. In the long term, there exists the granger causality among public participation, government regulation and environment pollutions. Our results also show that improving the public participation’s ability in environmental protection and strengthening government regulation’s intensity are the basic measures to improve China's environmental pollution in the long run.