Environmental Regulation and Agricultural Water Governance Effectiveness: Micro-Level Evidence from Rural China

Agricultural water governance faces persistent challenges, including fragmented responsibilities, insufficient motivation, and weak long-term maintenance. Environmental regulation (ER) is regarded as an important policy instrument for addressing market failures and the limitations of spontaneous village-level governance, yet whether ER improves agricultural water governance effectiveness (AWGE) remains insufficiently examined. Based on survey data from 1304 farmers in seven provinces of China, this study employs ordinary least squares regression to investigate the relationship between ER and village-level AWGE, both measured using farmers’ perceptions collected through questionnaire surveys. The results show that ER and its sub-dimensions are positively associated with AWGE. Mechanism analysis reveals that policy implementation capacity (PIC) and farmer participation (FP) mediate the relationship between ER and AWGE. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that this positive association is more pronounced in central China and in areas where the village-level River Chief System was established earlier. These findings provide empirical evidence for constructing a compound ER mechanism integrating guidance, incentives, and constraints, strengthening the dual pathway of grassroots implementation and FP, and adopting differentiated governance strategies according to regional resource endowments and institutional development stages.