Abstract: By establishing the theoretical framework of economic regulation of agricultural non-point source pollution, and taking the situation without any regulation as the benchmark, the effectiveness of factor based environmental tax, total amount based environmental tax, total amount based environmental tax/subsidy, output based environmental tax and collective penalty mechanism in regulating agricultural non-point source pollution is compared. The game behaviors of agricultural non-point source polluters and regulators under five regulatory mechanisms and unregulated situations are tested by using experimental economics methods, and the five regulatory mechanisms are prioritized based on the differences in efficiency and stability. It is found that environmental tax regulation of agricultural non-point source pollution is feasible and effective; Factor based environmental tax, total amount based environmental tax and output based environmental tax are superior to total pollution based environmental tax/subsidy and collective fine mechanism. There is no significant difference between factor based environmental tax and output based environmental tax, and they are significantly superior to total amount based environmental tax mechanism, while the collective fine mechanism is superior to total pollution based environmental tax/subsidy mechanism; There is no comparison between the collective fine and pollution gross environmental tax/subsidy mechanism and the unregulated situation. Although the regulatory efficiency of the former two is higher than that of the unregulated situation, the regulatory stability is poor.

Key words: environmental tax, agricultural non-point source pollution, environmental regulation, experimental economics, comparative study