Does China Exsit Environmental Tournament?——Empirical Evidence Based on Prefecture-Level Cities

Does China exsit environmental tournament? Based on the panel data of 277 prefecture level cities from 2004 to 2018, this paper finds that: first, the faster improvement of urban air quality will significantly improve the promotion probability of mayors, which indicates that there really exsit environmental tournament in China; Second, the GDP tournament still plays a significant role in the promotion of mayors, and the coexistence of environmental tournament and GDP tournament has been formed; Third, since 2013, the incentive effect of the environmental tournament on the promotion of mayors has been significantly enhanced, and in cities with stronger administrative power, the incentive effect of the environmental tournament on the promotion of mayors is greater. This paper believes that the implementation of environmental tournament in China is an important mechanism for improving China’s environmental quality. In the future, we should further promote the transformation of official performance assessment, take multilevel promotion and strengthening incentives as measures in order to optimize the system design of environmental tournament, and continuously improve the environmental governance efficiency of local governments.