Chinese industrial water pollution and the prevention trends: An assessment based on environmental complaint reporting system (ECRS)

Abstract

Chinese government has set the Environmental Complaint Reporting System (ECRS) to monitor and manage industrial water pollution in a timely manner for years. Citizens can give feedback on water pollution incidents both online and offline, and report the human health risk. By combining methods of Pooled Least Squares, Instrumental Variable Estimation and Poisson Distribution to examine, the empirical results show that when control for the effects of instrumental variables such as the spread of information through mobile phones and internet, a higher pressure of improving the quality of environment would force and prompt the government to prevent industrial water pollution.