Impact of the Emergency Response to COVID-19 on Air Quality and Its Policy Implications: Evidence from 290 Cities in China

Overview

Journal Environ Sci Policy

Publisher Elsevier

Date 2023 Apr 18

PMID 37070073

Authors

Qingyong Zhang

Xianqiang Mao

Zhengzao Wang

Yutong Tan

Ziyin Zhang

Yanjie Wu

Yubing Gao

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic had an extreme exogenous impact on society and the economy. This paper aims to explore the impacts of the national emergency response and the subsequent emergency response termination on air quality and its policy implications through regression discontinuity design (RDD) estimation by employing panel data on daily air quality from January 1, 2019, to July 31, 2020, for 290 cities in China. The empirical results showed that the emergency response resulted in a significant decrease in most of the major pollutant concentrations within a short time frame, and the average air quality index (AQI) decreased by approximately 11.0%. The concentrations of PM, PM, SO, NO, and CO decreased by approximately 18.8%, 13.1%, 13.5%, 11.1% and 6.7%, respectively, while the O concentration did not change significantly. Further causal analysis found that mandatory traffic restrictions and the shutdown of industries were two important factors that contributed greatly to air quality improvement. Moreover, since the process of returning to normal daily activities and promoting the economy were gradual, the results showed that air pollution did not rebound immediately after the government called for the "resumption of production and work" and announced the "termination of the emergency response". Our findings suggest that to achieve a substantial and sustainable improvement in air quality, it is necessary to continuously implement strict emission control routines and take co-control measures for various VOCs precursors of ozone.

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