Impacts of Agricultural Policies on Non-Point Source Pollution in Planting

Based on the externality theory of public policies, the side-effect model for policy evaluation was adopted as the basic model for strategic environmental assessment of agricultural policies and used in combination with the multivariate linear regression analysis method to identify factors of the agricultural policies affecting agricultural non-point source pollution in different regions of China and to study how the prevailing agricultural policies affect agricultural non-point source pollution by regulating fertilizer application rate per unit area. Results indicate that the prevailing agricultural policies for land use, agricultural structure, finance and human resources all have some significant impacts, which are either positive or negative, varying with combination of the agricultural policy indices and the region, as well. The side-effect model, in combination with the multivariate linear regression analysis method is found applicable to strategic environmental assessment of agricultural policy. The analysis of impacts of the agricultural policies on agricultural non-point source pollution may provide some theoretical references for management and control of agricultural non-point source pollution risks at the policy level.