ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY STRINGENCY AND ITS IMPACT ON AIR POLLUTION IN POLAND

The article aims to assess the level of severity of the environmental policy in Poland compared to the selected EU countries and the impact of this level on the SO2, NOX, VOCs, CO2, and GHG emissions and premature mortality due to exposure to PM2.5. In the research based on OECD and Eurostat data, multiple regression analysis is used. The results of regression analysis do not allow for drawing unequivocal conclusions. The use of one of the selected measures of environmental policy stringency confirms the impact of this stringency on all the studied variables characterising air pollution. In contrast, in the other measure, this relationship was found only for two variables. The reason for different results may be the adoption of different research periods (1990-2012 and 1994-2018) due to the availability of data.