Environmental pollution is a development issue that human beings need to deal with together (Yue et al., 2021). Environmental pollution will have a huge impact on human health and threaten the survival and development of human beings. Some studies found that emissions from human life and industry production not only cause air pollution, such as heavy metal emissions, persistent organic pollutants, spills and hazardous waste sites, but also water pollution that will damage human health after people drink them (René et al., 2010; Wang and Yang, 2016; Ebenstein, 2012). Among many environmental problems, ambient air pollution, as an environmental problem that everyone is familiar with, will have an important impact on human health (Semenova, 2020).

Long-term exposure to air pollution can easily lead to stroke in the older adults (Ma et al., 2022), increase prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis (Alsaber et al., 2020) and even reduce human fertility (Nieuwenhuijsen et al., 2014). It is worth noting that air pollution is strongly associated with mortality. Lung cancer and cardiopulmonary diseases caused by air pollution are important causes of death (Dockery et al., 1993; Jalaludin and Cowie, 2014). Ambient air pollution is a complex environmental problem. Firstly, there are many factors that can lead to air pollution. Both emissions and pollution created by human life and industrial production, such as solid waste, dust, smoke, waste gas, wastewater, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, etc. Can trigger air pollution (Bernauer and Koubi, 2013). Secondly, air pollution has a spatial spillover effect. If regional air pollution cannot effectively be controlled, it will spread to other areas and bring new pollution (Chen and Ye, 2019). Thirdly, seasonal variations also affect the level of air pollutant concentration, because seasonal diversity of buildings’ energy consumption can affect pollutant emission (Ayoobi et al., 2021).

Regulating Air Quality: The first global assessment of air pollution legislation has been issued by UN in September of 2021 to deal with ambient air pollution. This report acclaimed that Improving air quality is key to tackling the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste (United Nations Environment Programme, 2021). And this report recognized that there is no silver bullet to address the air pollution crisis, the role of environmental governance is critical to addressing the pollution crisis (United Nations Environment Programme, 2021). Chinese government also attaches great importance to the ambient air pollution. Environmental Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China, The Law of the People's Republic of China on the Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution The Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution, ambient air quality standard (GB3095-2012) have been issued by Chinese government to cope with increasingly ambient air pollution. Factors as the rule of law, regulatory quality and control of corruption were the governance dimensions that contributed to the environmental quality in the long run (Kyriacou and Oriol, 2021). Besides, environmental governance investment from governments is regarded as immediate measure. According to Annual report of China’s ecological environment sairtatistics from 2016–2020, the data of 2021 have not issued, the amount of China’s environmental governance investment was fluctuating growth (See Table 1). However, there are limited researches on whether government investment in environmental governance will have a positive effect on air pollution. On the contrary, some researchers deemed that government expenditures on environmental protection alone does not play a significant role in contributing to better environmental quality and improvements in quality of governance is the key to deal with environmental protection (Gholipour and Farzanegan, 2018; Moshiri and Daneshmand, 2019).

Data collected from the website of the ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People’s Republic of China: https://www.mee.gov.cn/hjzl/sthjzk/sthjtjnb/index.shtml.

The purpose of this paper is to use China’s environmental data for 18 consecutive years (from 2003 to 2020) to study whether the environmental governance investment of different provincial governments in China is related to the improvement of air quality. This paper will also find out the differences in different provinces from the spatial distribution. Then, combined with the results of the spatial analysis, further configuration analysis will be carried out to distinguish the different paths presented by the environmental governance of provincial governments. Finally, this paper will analyze the path of government environmental governance and provide theoretical reference for air protection.

Governments all over the world have experimented with different approaches to environmental governance, such as enacting public policy (Basoglu, 2019; Zhang et al., 2019), implementing advanced technology (Oberhauser, 2019; Wang and Ye, 2020; Zhao, 2021), and developing integrated governance tools (Abdul Rahman and Alsayegh, 2021; Fitriono, 2019; Pedregal et al., 2020). Among these methods, researchers have paid considerable attention to the direction and magnitude of government spending on environmental pollution. Previously, for instance, researchers applied a regression method to many industrialized nations from 1980 to 2018, including Canada, France, Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom, with conclusions advocating for higher expenditures on renewable energy as well as energy efficiency to assure a continual improvement in environmental quality (Musibau et al., 2021). Another study recommended that governments in developing countries allocate larger budgets for environmental projects as part of their fiscal reforms, using a generalized method to estimate the impact of government expenditures on environmental quality by measuring sulfur dioxide (SO2), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and ammonia nitrogen emissions (AN) (Zeraibi et al., 2021). In addition, a study examined the effectiveness of the three levels of government’s fiscal commitments in reducing CO2 emissions in Nigeria from 2005 to 2020, resulting in increased government spending to address environmental pollution (Onyinyechi and Olasupo, 2022).

However, the government investment could not always benefit the environmental governance in some circumstances. According to research, fiscal pressure reduces the improving effect of vertically applied environmental protection pressure on local government environmental governance (Kou and Han, 2021). Additionally, from 1995 to 2014, a study examined the impact of environmental expenditures on the ecological deficit as a proxy for environmental quality for nine coordinated market economies in Europe, demonstrating that environmental expenditures can increase wellbeing over environmental quality (Basoglu and Uzar, 2019). Moreover, researchers used spatial data from 31 Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2017 to run a spatial econometric model and discovered an inverse U-shaped relationship between environmental expenditures and pollution (Yang et al., 2021). In sum, government investment and other forms of financial assistance could benefit environmental stewardship, but factors such as local economic development and natural systems may limit the effects.

Undeniably, air pollution is a top priority on the international agenda and is generally recognized as a risk to public health and economic prosperity (Dhimal et al., 2021; Shaddick et al., 2020). In China, reform and opening during the past four decades have accomplished not only outstanding achievements but also increased ecological degradation (Ma et al., 2020), with air pollution data in China indicating 1900 ug/m2 of SO2 and 3,200 ug/m2 of NO2 (Xu et al., 2021). According to certain studies, government investment and subsidies benefit air pollution prevention and environmental standards (Bump et al., 2019; Tessum et al., 2019; Li et al., 2015). For example, a study examined data from 77 countries from 1980 to 2000 to examine the impact of government spending on air pollution, finding that more government spending resulted in reduced sulfur dioxide emissions and improved air quality (Halkos paizanos, 2012). Later, a study explored the effect of fiscal policy on air pollution in Pakistan, using the vector autoregressive model on annual data from 1976 to 2018, finding that a budgetary policy scenario has been enacted which boosts government expenditures to mitigate the effects of CO2 emissions (Abbass et al., 2021). Besides, one study suggested that government financing could be the primary source for combating air pollution in the Asia-Pacific area (Husain T. et al., 2021).

Meanwhile, one related study expanded an environmental Kuznets curve framework to analyze the direct and indirect spillover effects of environmental awareness of provincial governments on SO2 emissions using regional econometric models and found that environmental protection expenditures are adversely connected with SO2 pollution (Jiang et al., 2020). Then, according to a study on environmental governance in Taiwan, air pollution control subsidies from the central government can be more effective in improving local air quality than local budget expenditures on environmental protection (Huang, 2021). Also, in Ghana, a study estimated the welfare and environmental effects of imported refined oil subsidies removal with a multi-region computable general equilibrium model, indicating that the removal of subsidies for these imports would lead to the increment of CO2 emissions in this country (Wesseh et al., 2016). Furthermore, several research studies have demonstrated the impact of government investment on the environment of bordering areas. For example, researchers used the data based on China’s 30 provinces during one decade, combined with spatial correlation analysis and dynamic panel models, and the results showed that the local government’s environmental investment reduces pollution in neighboring regions, demonstrating “free-rider” behavior in positive geographical spillover (Yang, 2021).

As the previous study suggested that changes in the environmental regulations of neighboring regions could hinder the ability of local governments to control haze pollution (Cheng and Zhu, 2021). Thus, long-term cooperation and collaboration in all areas are essential. To investigate the long-term results, a study examined the daily mean of PM10, SO2, and NO2 levels in Beijing from 2006 to 2015, it established a link between the atmospheric indices and government-invested environmental protection funds, demonstrating a direct relationship between the success of government financial contributions and the promotion of air quality, but during research, it is also discovered that long-term financial investment reduces air quality improvement (Xie and Wang, 2018). Government investment in environmental governance and accompanying financial support has a favorable effect on lowering air pollution. However, the benefit diminishes over time. Furthermore, the spatial impact frequently results in the phenomena of “free-riding.” Moreover, these studies typically involve baseline investigations and focus on part geographic regions.

In summary, prior studies have demonstrated positive effects of government investment on environmental governance, particularly the influence on air pollution control. However, despite the researchers’ extensive use of models and theories in environmental sciences and econometrics to develop and validate their hypotheses, there are still some limitations to this field of study. Firstly, most studies focused on “time” changes but disregarded “time-space” linkages. Secondly, most studies focused on changes in individual locations and not concentrated on provincial or inter-regional comparisons, as the spatial effect indicates that when environmental protection measures are enacted in a region, the environment in the nearby areas can benefit from it. Thirdly, some advanced research methods, including Moran’s Index and configuration analysis, have been combined infrequently on research of air pollution governance. Therefore, the limitations of existing researches provide new direction for further researches. This paper will explore the Spatial-temporal correlation of several air pollution indicators by analyzing environmental data of provincial regions in mainland China from 2003 to 2020, examining whether government investment of various provinces is related to air quality. In addition, this paper will combine Moran’s Index and configuration analysis to research the path of governments’ air governance.

In the previous section, the geographical spatiotemporal weighted regression analysis between the government’s environmental investment and air quality was conducted, and the conclusion was drawn that there was a spatiotemporal correlation. Further, through qualitative comparative analysis from the perspective of configuration, this paper intends to carry out effective path research on high performance of government environmental governance in dialogue with the actual situation, providing scientific basis for subsequent suggestions on governance policy optimization. In order to study the effective path of environmental governance by governments of different provinces and regions, it is necessary to introduce a multi-factor concurrent causal relationship that regards the environmental governance status of governments of different provinces as a combination of multiple conditions. On this basis, the research question that this part focuses on is what kind of antecedent configuration combination can achieve high environmental performance of government air control.

Many studies acclaimed the importance of government policies in environmental governance (Zheng and Na, 2020; Peng et al., 2021). However, some studies have found that there is a significant negative correlation between government scale and environmental quality. The higher the percentage of government expenditure in GDP, the more ambient air pollution (Bernauer and Koubi, 2013). And there is an obvious spatial spillover effect on air pollution among key cities (Gong and Zhang, 2017), it means that the environmental deterioration of one area may be affect its surrounding areas. Contrary to common knowledge, some scholars pointed out that the administrative intervention of local governments is not conducive to environmental improvement. Due to the competition of GDP growth between local governments, this adverse impact has a spatial spillover effect (Liu et al., 2021; Han et al., 2022). The analysis results of this study also confirm that there is a negative relationship between environmental governance investment and air quality based on time and space. It shows that the air quality control or other environment actions are complex cross-provincial projects, the air quality of one province and its neighboring provinces cannot be improved only by increasing the environmental investment.

Since China’s Reform and Opening up in 1978, the rapid industrialization process has been accompanied by the deterioration of air quality, and air pollution has exacerbated the health burden (Chen et al., 2013). Although local governments have issued environmental protection policies and strengthened the implementation, the effect on air pollution is not sustainable (Cao and Ramirez, 2020). Therefore, based on the previous findings, this study puts forward the following suggestions for air protection.

Firstly, government should formulate long-term air governance policies, focusing not only on the present, but also on the future. The central government of China has issued a series of documents on environmental governance and air pollution, which play a guiding role in the actions of local governments. However, the proportion of environmental governance indicators in the assessment of local government leaders is not prominent, environmental governance has not been paid attention to for a long time. Eastern and central provinces (such as Shandong, Shanxi, and Hebei) have a good industrial base, and their industrial structure is more industrial. From the Figure 1, the data shows that despite increased investment in environmental governance, these provincial governments have placed more importance on economic development, so environmental improvement represented by air quality has been difficult to achieve. In connection with the United Nations SDGs 2030 Goals and China’s Carbon Goal of Emission Peak and Carbon Neutrality, China Central government needs to increase the importance of environmental governance in the assessment system for government officials, urging local officials to pay attention to environmental governance.

Secondly, government environmental governance of air pollution should pay attention to the cooperativity of environmental governance between regions. The actions of local governments are crucial to China’s environmental governance because they need to implement the central environmental policy and take responsibility for local social welfare and public health (Wu and Hu, 2019). Although this study only used the data of 31 provinces, and did not analyzed the more detailed data of Municipality-level cities, the Moran Index analysis of still showed the trend of spatial aggregation about the AQ, from insignificant at 2003 to significant at 2018. This article shows that there is a negative correlation between environmental governance and air quality under the spatiotemporal weighted analysis (GTWR). Besides, ambient air pollution has spill effect. According to Figure 1, eastern and central provinces in northern China replaced western provinces as areas with poor air quality. That is so say, air quality in one area can be affected by pollution in other areas. Therefore, the central government should formulate a unified plan, build a cross provincial environmental governance plan, and coordinate different provinces in nearby regions to participate in environmental governance.

Thirdly, the third sectors, companies and the public should be encouraged in air protection. Some empirical analyses have been shown that Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (ENGOs) and companies have a positive impact on the improvement of environmental quality (Bao et al., 2020; Li et al., 2021). Local people can be mobilized and organized by ENGOs and companies to participate in environmental improvement activities (Wang et al., 2020), which will alleviate the pressure of governments on environmental protection. The underdeveloped provinces can hardly balance the limited financial resources of environmental governance with economic and social development, while the governments of developed provinces can invest more funds in environmental governance. With the increasing importance of environmental governance, governments can change the previous environmental strategy and provide some financial support to ENGOs and companies, so that they can play a greater role in environmental governance. This paper suggests that governments with poor financial capacity, they can still mobilize social forces to participate in environmental governance. For example, governments can propagate and promote the application of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) which is an investment concept and evaluation standard that focuses on enterprise environment, society and governance performance rather than financial performance (Daugaard and Ding, 2022). ESG will encourage companies to increase investment on air protection and alleviate the increasing pressure of government environmental investment.

Fourthly, government should build a whole-process air governance strategy. Based on the configuration analysis in Chapter four, this paper suggests that the whole process of government environmental governance strategy should be constructed. At the early stage of air governance, governments should adopt legislation and standard formulation to improve air pollutant emission standards, which can reduce emissions and strengthen source control of pollutants. Then, in the process of air governance, governments can encourage the participation of enterprises, the public and the third-party by fiscal and tax policy enactment (Tu et al., 2020), propagating and education. In the later stage of air governance, governments should to strengthen the responsibility review of government managers and air governance evaluation, and urge governments with poor air governance effects to improve their air governance results immediately.

The analysis of this paper is based on the environmental data of the macro panel, which has enlightening significance for the air quality governance between different local governments. However, panel data may not respond to individual and company behavior. Company environmental governance and strategy are also very important, such as ESG which can help people to know the emission decision-making, social responsibility and environmental protection behavior of companies. This paper suggests researchers to conduct more researches on ESG.