Does environmental pollution promote China's crime rate? A new perspective through government official corruption

Environmental pollution and its effects have attracted increasing attention, but few studies have examined the impact of environmental pollution on the crime rate. This study adopted panel data of 30 provinces in China for the period 2005 to 2016 to examine the relationship between environmental pollution and the crime rate. In addition, a mediating effect model is used to study the mechanism through which environmental pollution influences the crime rate. This study considers the threshold effect of government official corruption on the link between environmental pollution and the crime rate. The generalized method of moments and a newly developed dynamic threshold panel model are employed to manage potential endogeneity problems. The estimation results indicate that environmental pollution significantly promotes China's crime rate. Environmental pollution can indirectly affect the crime rate through residents' health level, education level and inequality. The magnitude of the effect of environmental pollution on the crime rate will be greater after corruption reaches the threshold value. Regional heterogeneity analysis shows that a significant positive impact of environmental pollution on the crime rate exists in the eastern and western regions of China but not in the middle region. Based on the findings, we propose a series of policy implications to reduce criminal activities in China from the perspective of environmental pollution.