Will China’s audit of natural environmental resource promote green sustainable development? Evidence from PSM-DID analysis based on substantial and strategic pollution reduction

Countries around the world have become concerned about their responsibility to protect the environment and resources. In this paper, we established a model of multi-period PSW-DID (weighted propensity score matching- differences-in-differences) to test the effect of China's audit of natural resource. We found that: (1) local governments had a strategic incentive to reduce pollution, they paid more attention to environmental performance linked to individual promotion than to green innovation and development. (2) Compared with the long-term and complexity of water pollution control, they paid more attention to air pollution treatment. (3) In the long run, the environmental audit was indeed beneficial to the improvement of environmental quality, but the time of taking effect was the second year (one-year lag). (4) In addition, because of the contradiction between the neglect of human capital and the timeliness of environmental supervision, the local government did not show substantial pollution reduction. Therefore, local officials should foster the long-term responsibility consciousness of green innovation and pay more attention to the integration of human capital. The audit of natural resources should establish a long-term mechanism, which could establish a complete accountability system or change off-office audit to interim audit. The construction of audit big data platforms should pay more attention to substantive characteristic data, such as data on population inflow, which is not only a paper score of air pollution. This study can reveal the dilemma of pollution prevention and control in China, urge local governments to promote the rational flow of human resources, improve the innovation level, and achieve substantive pollution control and efficiency enhancement of green development.