Political spillover effects of environmental policy: Evidence from China

This paper explores the causal relationship between automatic environmental monitoring and political trust. We utilize staggered monitoring automation as exogenous shocks to assess the impact on residents' political trust. Our findings reveal a significant and positive effect of monitoring automation on political trust, a factor rarely considered by most existing studies. The mechanism investigation shows that monitoring automation has heightened residents' environmental concerns and increased their expectations regarding the government's role in pollution prevention. This paper offers a pioneering quantitative assessment of feedback from residents due to a specific environmental policy, suggesting that potential spillover effect should be considered.