Water Quality Improvement of the Yangtze River: Practical Effects of a New Resident Technological Assistance Model

Abstract

Resident technological assistance, also known as resident or on-site tracking, was officially launched in 58 cities in 2018 to protect and restore the Yangtze River ecological environment. In contrast to supervision by a central inspection body, the core principle was to provide a mechanism to diagnose local water pollution prevention and control problems based on local scientific and technological support. Resident scientific teams perform local environmental analyses and develop comprehensive solutions. Resident work has important practical guiding significance for water environment management in river basins. In this study, we quantified the improvement effect of this program using the Differences-in-Differences method (DID) and urban-level panel data from the Yangtze River Basin from 2016 to 2021. The results showed that resident work played an important and dynamic role in promoting water quality improvement in the Yangtze River Basin. However, the impact of resident work varied among cities with different levels of economic development. Primarily, resident work played a greater role in cities with low levels of economic development. Moreover, the quality of residents’ work significantly affected water quality improvement; specifically, high scores for resident work was associated with more significant water quality improvement.

Keywords: Resident work, Yangtze River Basin, Differences-in-Differences, Water quality improvement, Resident technological assistance