Citizen Monitoring of Waterways

• In Event: Chinese Politics Mini-Conference: Information Politics: Collection, Communication, and Processing

Abstract

Citizen monitoring of water quality might lead to reductions in pollution by providing information to government officials to facilitate oversight of water quality, or by raising public demand for the remediation of pollution. In a field experiment, we randomly assign urban waterways in Jiangsu province to be monitored for water quality by a partner non-governmental organization for more than a year. We further randomize whether citizen monitoring of water quality is disseminated to government agencies, the public, or both, and measure whether these treatments result in improved water quality and decreased littering after approximately two years. We find that citizen monitoring disseminated to government agencies improves water quality, while monitoring disseminated to the public has no effect on water quality, littering, and the attitudes of residents who live close to waterways. These results suggest that non-governmental organizations have the potential to influence the actions of government officials with monitoring, but as yet do not have strategies to change public behavior or attitudes. To impact resource quality, monitoring must solve a specific information problem that prevents the enforcement or implementation of rules for resource management.

Authors

• Mark Buntaine, University of California, Santa Barbara

• Bing Zhang, Nanjing Universiyt

• Patrick Hunnicutt, University of California, Santa Barbara