Abstract
Considering the bargaining power of enterprises, this paper distinguishes between “Offering Bribes Voluntarily” (OBV) and “Offering Bribes under Pressure from Environmental Inspectors” (NOBV). An evolutionary game model between environmental inspectors and enterprises is constructed to study the corruption of environmental inspectors in the process of environmental tax collection under the system of upward accountability. At the same time, numerical simulations are carried out using China’s pollution discharge data and pollution discharge fee collection standards in 2017. The results show that when enterprises have different bargaining powers, there are differences in the evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) in the process of environmental tax collection. Enterprises with weak bargaining power may adopt “OBV” strategy. Under the system of upward accountability, it is difficult for the public to form adequate supervision over polluting enterprises and environmental inspectors. Only with the power of the upper-level government can the public’s supervisory role be brought into play. High audit costs and environmental tax rates may be objective incentives for environmental inspectors’ corruption and enterprises’ bribery.
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All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplementary information files).
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This study is funded by the National Ministry of Education Humanities and Social Science Research Planning Fund Project 18YJA790031. In the writing process, the fund provides financial support for our exchanges with related scholars and software learning.
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Conceptualization, Po Kou; Writing—original draft, Po Kou; Methodology, Po Kou and Ying Han; Formal analysis and investigation, Po Kou and Ying Han; Funding acquisition, Ying Han; Software, Yuanxian Li.
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Kou, P., Han, Y. & Li, Y. An evolutionary analysis of corruption in the process of collecting environmental tax in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 54852–54862 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13104-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13104-4