Transboundary Air Pollution and Hazy Accountability : Evidence from South Korea and China

Environmental problems often originate at least partially in other jurisdictions. We argue that transboundary pollution can increase public hostility towards the polluting country and break accountability links in the country that receives some of its pollution from abroad. We examine this argument in the context of trans-boundary air pollution in South Korea. South Korea’s air pollution is the worst in the OECD and it partially originates in China. We combine daily air quality measurements with Gallup World Poll surveys from 2015-2022 to show that on days with bad air quality, Koreans become significantly less satisfied with China’s leadership but not with the Korean government, including the government’s efforts to preserve the environment. We also use air quality as an instrument for subjective satisfaction with air quality and find that subjective beliefs about air quality have a strong negative causal effect on satisfaction with China’s leadership but have no significant effect on satisfaction with the Korean government. This evidence suggests that air pollution partially causes negative Korean views towards China and that cross-border deflection of responsibility may relief pressure from the South Korean government to adopt stronger environmental measures. Moreover, we find that the effect runs through reduced confidence in the local economy rather than the effects of pollution on perceived life satisfaction or health