Abstract: The central environmental protection inspector embodies the system optimization and tools innovation of China’s vertical environmental governance. Based on the evolutionary game model of vertical governments and pollution enterprises, the key factors influencing the strategy selection of each subject is analyzed, and with the help of system simulation, the influence of main parameters on the system stability and convergence trend is depicted, and the effect of central environmental protection inspector on air pollution governance is studied. The main results show that: (1) At present, the central environmental protection inspector can effectively motivate polluting enterprises to carry out rectification, but the incentive effect on the local governments' regulatory strategies need to be further improved;local governments tend to opt for non-regulatory strategies by shifting responsibility to polluters.(2) The cost of inspector will have an impact on the effectiveness of the central environmental protection inspector system. If the cost of inspector is too high, it is easy for local governments and polluting enterprises to choose non-regulatory strategies and non-rectification strategies for air pollution control. (3) Compared with the evaluation index of atmospheric environment quality and environmental taxes and fees, improving the punishment of non-regulatory strategies can more effectively achieve the combination of local governments’ regulatory strategies and the polluting enterprises’ rectification strategies. Further, policy recommendations are put forward from the aspects of promoting the normalization of the inspector system, exploring objective and effective environmental policy tools, and building a collaborative environmental supervision system.

Key words: air pollution control; tripartite evolutionary game; central environmental protection inspector; environmental policy tools