Substantive Versus Symbolic Threat Response: How Reputational Pressure Affects Local Governments’ Environmental Governance Performance

Abstract

Bureaucratic Reputation Theory posits that reputational pressure exerts a constraining effect on the public sector and motivates it to achieve better performance. However, this theoretical perspective neglects the diverse sources of reputational pressure and fails to fully recognize the heterogeneous threat response behaviors of the public sector. This article seeks to revise this theoretical viewpoint by focusing on the environmental governance of local governments. Utilizing panel data from prefecture-level cities in China from 2014 to 2022, we empirically analyzed the impact of reputational pressure on local governments’ environmental governance performance, and revealed its underlying mechanism from the perspective of threat response behavior. The study found that: (1) Top–down reputational pressure exerts a significant positive effect on the environmental governance performance of local governments, while bottom–up reputational pressure fails to exert a significant positive effect; (2) The mechanism behind the aforementioned relationship lies in the different threat response behaviors triggered by the two types of reputational pressure. Top–down reputational pressure significantly triggers local governments’ substantive threat response behaviors in environmental governance, while bottom–up reputational pressure significantly triggers local governments’ symbolic threat response behaviors in environmental governance; (3) The higher the frequency of local leadership rotation, the more likely bottom–up reputational pressure triggers symbolic threat response behaviors in local governments’ environmental governance. The results contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of reputational pressure on the public sector’s organizational operation and performance. They also provide theoretical and policy insights for understanding the behavioral patterns of local governments and exploring reputation management strategies for government institutions.

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