Benefits and costs of campaign-style environmental implementation: evidence from China’s central environmental protection inspection system

Campaign-style environmental implementation (CEI) is widely exerted in environmental protection, while its benefits and costs are controversial. We take advantage of the Central Environmental Protection Inspection (CEPI) System—a latest and distinguished form of CEI launched by China in 2016, as a quasi-natural experiment, to compare the benefits and costs of CEI based on water pollution effect estimates. Our results based on the annual panel data from 500 cities during 2009–2018 show that CEPI significantly reduced water pollution by an average of 20.7%. Further cost–benefit analysis based on the estimates of water pollution reduction shows that the potential health benefits of mortality and morbidity reduction resulting from CEPI are at least $12.26 billion, without bearing additional economic costs. We also explore why CEPI is cost-effective and find that CEPI reduces water pollution and becomes cost-effective mainly through deterring local officials, punishing polluting enterprises, and increasing public participation in environmental governance.