Abstract: Big data governance has innovated China's air pollution control model. The existing literature has not yet focused on the evaluation study of the overall effect of this model. This paper proposes theoretical analysis logic of big data governance and measurement of its overall effect based on prefecture-level city panel data. The study shows that the implementation of the “ecological environment big data construction pilot” policy significantly reduces the AQI and the concentration of PM2.5, PM10, O3 and other pollutants in the pilot cities, which is supported by the robustness test. In addition, through the heterogeneity analysis, it is found that the governance effect of big data in eastern cities is more significant, the inhibition effect of AQI and PM2.5 in central China is greater than that in the east, and the inhibition effect on PM10 and O3 concentrations in central and western China is not obvious; at the same time, the governance effect of non-resource cities is stronger than that of resource cities, hence the greater governance necessity to cope with the differentiation. Mechanism analysis reflects that the big data governance pilot policy significantly improves the local government's scientific decision-making and regulatory capacity, but the public participation effect is relatively limited. The relevant data have reference value for promoting environmental big data governance in China.
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