Regional variations in environmental policy implementation: the impacts of China's rural human settlement environment policy on rural pollution

Despite China's emphasis on environmental governance, rural areas continue to face substantial challenges. We investigate the impacts of China's rural human settlement environment policy on rural pollution, focusing on regional variations in policy implementation by provincial governments. Utilizing text-mining methods to compare the policy documents issued by both central and provincial governments, we constructed an indicator termed 'policy content heterogeneity' to quantify heterogeneous local implementation behaviors. Based on the panel data from the 2014 and 2016 waves of the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS), we used Differences-in-Differences models to analyze the changes in rural human settlement environment among 4,174 rural households across 165 rural communities. Our study found that air, water, and noise pollution have been significantly mitigated among provinces implementing policies with a higher degree of policy content heterogeneity. This study advocates for consideration of regional diversity when formulating and enforcing national policies by constructing policy content heterogeneity as a novel dimension in evaluating local government behavior and underscores the need for continuous research and monitoring of local policy implementation processes.