Does emission control area policy reduce sulfur dioxides concentration in Shanghai?

As an important measure to abate ship-source air emissions, the establishment of Emission Control Area (ECA) has been adopted not only at international level, but also at national and regional level. However, there exists a research gap of employing econometric models to enrich the ECA policy evaluation research by testing the effectiveness of an ECA policy based on the empirical data. This paper focuses on the effectiveness of the ECA policy in shanghai port by adopting regression discontinuity (RD) approach. The RD design is considered as a wonderful substitution for the randomized control trial, which usually serves as a conventional and effective tool to address endogeneity. The causal effect of the ECA policy on the SO₂ concentration reduction can be detected by the RD approach. According to the estimated results, there is a discontinuity around the ECA policy cutoff point, and it is indicated that the SO₂ concentration in Shanghai decreased by at least 0.229 μg/m³ daily on average due to the implementation of the ECA policy. The positive role that the ECA policy plays in reducing SO₂ concentration in Shanghai is well demonstrated. This paper also puts forward an agenda for the future studies in the domain of the ECA policy evaluation.