Promotion Incentive Effect of Pollution Reduction: Evidence from Provincial Party Secretaries and Governors

Purpose/Significance Through examining the impact of local environmental governance on the political promotion of the provincial party secretaries and governors, it is expected to explore the incentive effect of the environmental performance appraisal system, and provide empirical evidence and policy suggestions for further optimizing local environmental governance and cadre management system. Design/Methodology Considering the multi-dimensional governance performance, including economic development, environmental protection, social security and people’s livelihood, this paper constructs the regression model for the officials’ promotion, and takes the provincial party secretaries and governors who changed their positions from 1997 to 2017 as samples. Findings/Conclusions Both the reduction of SO₂ and industrial COD have a positive impact on the promotion odds of provincial officials, especially after 2007, but the impact of SO₂ reduction is much larger than that of industrial COD reduction. Local GDP growth has a significant and steady positive impact on the political promotion of officials. However, after 2007, the impact of local GDP growth has weakened significantly and begun to be smaller than the impact of SO₂ reduction. Therefore, the GDP-based performance management system for local officials has been undergoing significant reform.