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Afforestation is a promising nature-based climate solution for mitigating climate change, but it is subject to a complex web of biophysical, cost-benefit, market, and policy processes. Although its biophysical feasibility has been established, the cost, market, and policy constraints that affect climate change mitigation through afforestation are still unclear. Here, we estimate such cost, market, and policy constraints on the basis of biophysical feasibility. Our findings reveal that implementation costs are a more relevant constraint than opportunity costs on mitigating climate change through afforestation. The China Certified Emission Reduction market currently provides only a 0.308 % incentive for climate change mitigation through afforestation, due to market access constraints. The current market prices of China Certified Emission Reduction, China Carbon Emissions Trading Exchange, and Nature Based Carbon Offset in Voluntary Carbon Market constrain 88.15 %, 87.95 %, and 85.75 % of CO 2 removal actions through afforestation, compared to the carbon price scenario (US$62.97 tCO 2 -1 ) of the EU Emissions Trading System. Moreover, land policy under the scenarios of prohibiting conversion of cultivated land to forest and forest restoration in degraded areas exhibit 8.87-29.59 % and 65.16-74.10 % constraints, respectively, on mitigating climate change through afforestation compared to land-use freedom conversion scenarios from 2020 to 2060. Thus, enhancing the incentive price of CO 2 removal, addressing the market access barrier, strengthening cooperation between global carbon markets, and exploring carbon-neutral and food multi-oriented land policies can be valuable sources of mitigation efforts over the next 40 years., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

The key to controlling environmental pollution is to promote green innovation in relevant enterprises and achieve a healthy development of the environmental governance system. This paper constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model of environmental protection enterprises, polluting enterprises, and governments, and conducts in-depth research on the influencing factors that promote green innovation in two types of enterprises. MATLAB software is used to analyze the impact of different degrees of influencing variables on system evolution. It has found that (1) increasing the intensity of environmental governance and the level of innovation subsidies by the government can effectively promote green innovation in both types of enterprises. (2) The varying degrees of innovation compensation from polluting enterprises to environmental protection enterprises have a significant impact on system evolution. (3) The initial intention and population size of two types of enterprise entities will have a significant impact on system evolution. In the initial state, subjects with more green innovation are less willing to change their strategies during the evolution process, while the willingness of the other party to green innovation will be suppressed., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Using NVivo12plus software, this study constructs a generation model of the policy implementation environment in China's grassroots digital construction by examining the data from interviews with 37 Chinese grassroots civil servants as its research object. At the same time, with the help of the csQCA method and on the basis of rooted coding, using Tosmana software, the model validation and model expansion of 37 cases were carried out. This study shows that the main components of the policy implementation environment in China's grassroots digital construction include five main dimensions: cognitive, emotional, behavioral, normative and control. At the initial stage of China's grassroots digital construction, the cognitive environment dimension is the most critical link in the environmental governance of policy implementation. The cognitive and normative environments dominate the effect pattern of China's grassroots digital policy implementation. There are six types of motivation patterns for the environmental effect of the implementation of grassroots digital policy: know-doing-norm, cognitive-dominant, know-doing-control, emotion-control, behavior-lacking and regulation-dominant types. Based on the above analysis, there are three main policy suggestions to promote the generation of a productive policy implementation environment and positive policy effects in China's digital construction: "degree", "force" and "sense". These suggestions include strengthening the top-level design, improving the integration and cooperation degree of the environment, taking the root at the grassroots level to improve the adaptability of the environment, as well as increasing publicity and promotion to improve the sense of environmental experience., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Li, Liu. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

This paper takes the establishment of the Green Financial Reform and Innovation Pilot Zone (GFPZ) in 2017 as a natural experiment, adopts the data of a-share industrial listed enterprises in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2020, and utilizes the difference-in-differences (DID) method to carry out empirical tests. The results show that (1) GFPZ policy significantly improves the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance of enterprises, and the positive effect is mainly realized by improving the external financing ability and green-technology innovation level of enterprises. (2) There is heterogeneity in the impact of GFPZ policy on the ESG performance of firms with different equity natures and internal control levels. (3) Green finance promotes active corporate social responsibility, and it can further improve environmental governance in the regions where it operates. This paper provides a useful supplement to the comprehensive understanding of green-finance policy effects and ESG impact factors, and it is of great significance in mitigating the negative environmental and social externalities caused by the excessive pursuit of economic benefits by enterprises., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Zhang, Wei. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The expansion of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has raised a wide range of concerns about its environmental impact. Therefore, from the perspective of environmental impacts, this study used the two-way fixed effect staggered differences in differences (TWFE Staggered DID) method to examine the impact of the BRI on the Environment Goods (EGs) intra-industry trade (IIT) between China and other Belt and Road (B&R) countries, including a sample of 191 countries, covering the period from 2010 to 2019 for eliminating the impact of COVID-19 and the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. Because only 135 countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding between 2010 and 2019, this study treated these B&R countries as the study group, and the other 73 countries (non-B&R countries) as the control group. This study described EGs using the 54 6-digit code Environment Goods in Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System listed in the "APEC LIST OF ENVIRONMENT GOODS" published by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in 2012, and used the intra-industry trade index proposed by Grubel and Lloyd in 1971 to measuring dependent variable. The research results indicated that the BRI has significantly promoted bilateral EGs IIT. The mechanism test implied that, in addition to direct impacts, the BRI also has indirect impacts by boosting the energy restructuring of B&R countries. These results prove that the BRI has positive impacts on the environment. The heterogeneity test showed that there is a heterogeneous impact depending on the type of IIT, product categorization, B&R countries' income levels, and geographic environment. This study not only gives theoretical and empirical evidence of the positive environmental impacts of the BRI, but also provides practical guidance for the development of EGS IIT between China and B&R countries, thereby contributing to global carbon emissions reduction and environmental governance to some degree., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Zhou et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Environmental regulations aim to reduce pollution and improve air quality and the health of residents. However, there is a lack of research focusing on the health and welfare effects of low-carbon city pilot policies. In this context, this study takes China's low-carbon city pilot policy as an entry point, focuses on the health effects of public environmental governance, and systematically investigates the effects and mechanisms of low-carbon city development on the health of middle-aged and elderly people by applying the difference-in-differences method. The study finds that low-carbon city (LCC) policy significantly improves the physical and mental health of middle-aged and elderly people, and the main transmission mechanism is the reduction in air pollution and improvement in social capital. These results hold following a series of robustness tests. Furthermore, low-carbon city construction can reduce hospitalization and outpatient costs for people over 45 years old by up to 3 % and 15.5 %, respectively. The findings of this study provide useful policy insights for ensuring sustainable improvement in environmental quality and public health., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

By utilizing the mediation effect model and the spatial Durbin model, this research investigates the influence that environmental restrictions have had on marine pollution in 38 coastal prefecture-level cities from the years 2000-2018. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the effect that environmental legislation has on contamination in offshore regions as well as its primary goal, the research takes a variety of different approaches into consideration. Following are the findings from the study; Firstly, pollution levels in coastal marine areas tend to rise at first and then fall when environmental laws are enacted, illustrating a non-linear pattern known as an inverted "U" shape. In order to improve the maritime environment through environmental legislation, it is crucial to support new green technologies. There is a "U" shaped linkage amongst environmental legislation and development of environmentally friendly technologies. Spatial spillover effects may allow for the regulation of coastal city environments to affect marine pollution in neighboring areas. Secondly, there is also an inverted "U" pattern visible in the impact trajectory of this effect. According to the results of this research, it is crucial to set up a strict and factually sound regulatory framework in the field of marine environmental governance. It is also suggested that local context be taken into account while crafting environmental regulating regulations. Also, it's crucial to promote development, dissemination, and use of green technology by completely capitalizing on the innovation's conduction effect. Thirdly, promoting cooperation efforts among areas to avoid and control such pollution is essential, and the transfer and management of offshore pollution between regions must be a top priority., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Climate change is a non-traditional security crisis affecting the global economy and diplomatic progress. In order to curtail carbon emissions and alleviate the perils of climate change at their roots, urban green innovation (UGI) has emerged as a pivotal technological solution. Using the expansion of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration in China as a case study, this paper develops a quasi-experimental model to analyze the effects of regional integration policies on UGI. The main findings are: (1) Regional integration policies significantly enhance UGI and their impact is more pronounced with the expansion of urban agglomerations; (2) Regional integration policies contribute to the advancement of exploitative green innovation while tending to diminish exploratory green innovation; (3) The green innovation effects (GIEs) created by the expansion of regional integration policies are largely influenced by governmental mechanisms on environmental governance as well as residents' green preferences. Based on these findings, recommendations are put forward to promote UGI from the perspective of policy implementation., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Traditional industries and industrialization have led to widespread environmental pollution and ecosystem degradation in major river basins globally. Strategies centered on ecological restoration and ecological economy are emerging as essential tools for effective environmental governance. This study aims to investigate how a multifaceted framework for land ecological consolidation, with various developmental goals, can effectively support ecological restoration and sustainability. Through quantitative analysis and in-depth interviews, we investigated the case of Yangtze riverside chemical industrial park in Changzhou. This park pursues ecological and economic sustainability through chemical industry transformation, ecological restoration and protection, ecological management, and ecological industry development. The results show that this practice established a multi-objective action framework rooted in urban renewal, land consolidation, ecological restoration, industrial transformation, and rural revitalization. Through multiplanning integration, integrated implementation and full-cycle profit distribution, the aim of ecological protection has been initially achieved, offering a crucial guarantee for sustainable development. A total of 96.47 ha ecological space expanded, which can generate ecological product worth CNY 7.283 billion, alongside a net economic benefit of CNY 978 million over three decades. The top-down ecological responsibilities, coupled with local developmental demands, have stimulated collaborations within a bottom-up endogenous network comprising government, enterprises, and residents., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The impact of the digital economy (DE) on urban environmental quality (EQ) is a critical aspect of China's economic development. This study investigates the impact of DI on urban EQ using the data from prefecture-level cities spanning the period from 2011 to 2021 and updates some disparate conclusions of related studies. It is discovered that a non-linear correlation exists between DE and urban EQ. Currently, DE can effectively improve local city EQ. This conclusion remains valid even after robustness tests and endogeneity treatment. The impact of DE on improving EQ can be classified as the impact of technological innovation, industrial upgrading, resource allocation, infrastructure construction, environmental governance, and changes in public lifestyle. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the influence of DE is particularly pronounced in cities located in central and eastern regions of China, those with higher levels of administrative management, resource-based urban areas, and those with more stringent environmental regulations., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Li, Yang. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

In recent years, one of the most important and innovative policy initiatives introduced by the Chinese government in the field of environmental protection and ecological civilization construction is the Central Environmental Protection Inspection (CEPI). CEPI is seen as a vital tool to encourage local implementation of environmental protection responsibility. Over the course of its operation (eight years), CEPI has transformed from the "campaign" phase to the "convention" phase. It is noted that while provincial governments face a common high-pressure environment created by CEPI, governance scenarios, behaviors, and performance vary across the country significantly. To better understand local governments' environmental governance behaviors under the transformation of CEPI, an integrated analysis framework consisting of two key elements, "central dominance" and "local proactiveness", is constructed based on the central-local interactions under the principal-agent model. Based on this framework, we conducted a multi-case comparative analysis of four classic cases, with the following findings. (1) Along with the operation of CEPI and its transformation, the interaction between the central and local governments leads to four governance scenarios: "control-active cooperation", "control-passive cooperation", "guidance-active promotion", and "guidance-passive promotion". (2) Influenced by various factors such as pressure by the central government, local governments' capabilities and governance motivations, local governments form governance behaviors with varying degrees of proactiveness and autonomy. (3) After examining the governance performance of varying behaviors, it is found that local government's "active promotion" behavior can achieve higher governance effectiveness in the "convention" phase. Therefore, it is of policy implication that local governments should be guided to transit from "passive cooperation" to "active promotion". This paper has important guiding significance for understanding local environmental governance behaviors under strong top-down institutional pressure., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Residents are one of the most significant stakeholder groups in ecologically vulnerable regions, and the local ecological environmental governance efforts require their active cooperation and participation. To this end, this study leverages the sampled survey data from residents across 14 cities in Guangxi, China, and uses a structural equation modeling analysis to explore the impact of environmental education perception on residents' ecological security behavior. The results indicate that psychological ownership of nature plays a positive mediating role between environmental education perception and residents' ecological security behavior, as well as between ecological consciousness and residents' ecological security behavior, thereby supporting the idea that a sense of stewardship in protecting ecological security is a key factor in residents' conversion of their ecological protection cognition into practical actions. Further research finds that visual fluency has a moderating effect on the relationship between environmental education perception and psychological ownership of nature. This study provides new insights into the theoretical understanding of the formation mechanism of residents' ecological security behavior, enriches the theory of psychological ownership, and offers policy recommendations for governments implementing ecological environmental propaganda programs., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Amid global climate imperatives and intensified economic competition, pivoting from China's conventional growth paradigms to innovative economic catalysts emerges as pivotal for its transformative agenda. Drawing on panel data from 141 principal urban conglomerates spanning 2011-2021, this investigation delves into the intricate nexus between the digital economy and carbon total factor productivity. Our empirical analysis unveils a U-shaped trajectory characterizing the digital economy - carbon total factor productivity interplay, accompanied by a congruent spatial spillover dynamic. While digital economy fortifies environmental governance mechanisms through amplified data and media channels, such regulatory frameworks, albeit efficacious in emission abatement, may inadvertently impede economic vitality, thus attenuating carbon total factor productivity. Progressing from digital economy's foundational phase to its comprehensive deployment, its reverberations on capital productivity manifest in a U-shaped curve, invigorating local carbon total factor productivity while potentially undermining adjacent regions. This digital economy - carbon total factor productivity interrelation is accentuated in advanced, non-resource-reliant metropolises with subdued innovation propensities. This discourse proffers nuanced policy implications for sculpting digital economy trajectories and bolstering carbon total factor productivity in a sustainable context., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest All authors disclosed no relevant relationships., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In 2015, the central government of China established the Central Environmental Protection Inspection (CEPI) system for oversight of local governments. It enhanced local government enforcement of environmental regulations, which had a considerable influence on the health of the local older adult population. This study quantifies the effects of local government regulation brought about by CEPI on the health of the older adult. It examines the impact mechanism using the DID model and panel data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). The results show that (1) local governments' environmental protection regulations implemented by CEPI have a positive impact on the general health of the older adult. The results of the study passed the parallel trend test, PSM test, replacement variable test, and placebo test and remained significant; (2) in terms of the impact mechanism, CEPI has promoted local governments' environmental governance initiatives, which has reduced industrial wastewater emissions, industrial sulfur dioxide emissions, and industrial fumes emissions. This has improved air quality, thereby creating a good living environment for the older adult and improving their overall health; (3) according to heterogeneity research, the health of older adult living in the Yangtze River Basin, urban older adult, and older adult without chronic diseases is more significantly affected by the environmental protection regulations of the local governments brought about by CEPI., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Yang, Deng, Ye, Liu and Hu.)

The River Chief System (RCS), a pivotal environmental governance policy promoted by the Chinese government, has far-reaching implications for public health. This study aims to comprehensively assess the impact of RCS on corporate pollution emissions, emphasizing its role in improving environmental quality and safeguarding public health. Utilizing a database of industrial enterprises and data from heavily polluting enterprises spanning 2003 to 2013. Manual collation of RCS policy implementation across prefecture-level cities during the same period. Application of the DID method to verify the impact of RCS on the extent of corporate pollution emissions. RCS significantly reduces pollution emissions from enterprises. Heterogeneity analysis reveals RCS to be more effective in addressing visible pollutants in rivers, non-provincial capitals, and heavily polluting industries, resulting in a notable reduction in pollution emissions. Mechanism testing underscores the importance of increasing government attention to environmental protection and strengthening environmental regulation as key factors contributing to RCS's success in reducing pollution emissions from enterprises. Additionally, the study finds that improving the business environment of enterprises, measured through the marketization index, enhances the effectiveness of RCS in improving river pollution by enterprises. This study introduces a new perspective on examining the pollution reduction and abatement effects of RCS, addressing a gap in micro-level research. The findings not only contribute to the understanding of RCS's impact on pollution but also offer valuable insights for governments and policymakers in promoting the further development and implementation of RCS policies. The results of this research are of significant importance in strengthening environmental governance and safeguarding public health. By effectively controlling corporate pollution emissions, RCS contributes positively to improving environmental quality and, consequently, enhancing public health outcomes., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Du and Li.)

The study endeavors to empirically assess the influence of digital finance on promoting enterprise green innovation, while simultaneously probing its underlying mechanisms, by leveraging panel data from a sample of 2071 China A-share listed firms over an extensive time frame spanning from 2011 to 2021. The findings demonstrate that digital finance plays a crucial role in promoting enterprise green innovation, and that both the coverage breadth and usage depth of digital finance have a significant effect on enterprise green innovation, but the digitization level of digital finance also has a non-significant effect on enterprise green innovation, and the conclusions hold even after multiple robustness tests and consideration of endogeneity issues. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis reveals that digital finance is only has a significant promoting effect on green innovation of SMEs, and high-tech enterprises. After conducting the mechanism analysis, it has been noted that digital finance serves as a facilitator in promoting green innovation in enterprises by reducing information asymmetry, stimulating consumer demand, and attenuating the distortion of regional factor markets. Intellectual property protection and environmental governance will strengthen the positive impact of digital finance on enterprises' green innovation. The research results provide policy implications for the green development of digital finance enabling enterprises., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Han, Zhang. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The relationship between fiscal regimes and urban industrial pollution emissions is unclear. This paper aims to explore the effects and mechanisms of fiscal centralization on urban industrial pollution emissions and environmental quality. Using the vertical reform of environmental administrations (VREA) in China as a quasi-natural experiment of fiscal centralization, this study applies a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) model to explore the differences in industrial pollution emissions between centralization cities and decentralization cities. The main findings are: (1) VREA significantly inhibits regional industrial pollution emissions, and the reform effect increases over time. This conclusion still holds after considering a series of robustness issues. (2) Industrial sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) and solid particulate emissions in the fiscal centralization cities have decreased significantly by 0.3281% and 0.2240%, respectively. However, there is no significant change in industrial wastewater discharges. (3) Environmental regulations, environmental expenditures, and pollution control investments of local governments are the main channels through which VREA reduces industrial pollution emissions. (4) The effects of VREA are more significant in central and western cities and small cities. (5) Relative to decentralization cities, centralization cities have improved air and water quality by 0.0825% and 0.1628%, respectively. These findings help to accurately assess the effects of fiscal centralization on regional environmental governance and provide a decision-making reference for further deepening environmental centralization reform in China., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

To strengthen cooperation among local governmental departments and improve water ecology, China has proposed the river management policy "river chief system + procurator". However, it remains to be verified that intergovernmental cooperative policies contribute to the improvement of China's water ecology. Based on data from 87 national water quality monitoring sites released by the China Environmental Monitoring Station from 2015 to 2022, this paper constructed a multiperiod differences-in-differences model to evaluate the effectiveness of the cooperative governmental policy, the "river chief system + procurator", on the improvement of the water quality of rivers and lakes. The results of the study show that cooperative government policy helps to improve the water environment of rivers and lakes, which means that the implementation of the "river chief system + procurator" policy has significantly improved water quality conditions where implemented. In addition, further analysis revealed that intergovernmental cooperative policies had a limited impact on relevant indicators of river and lake pollutants that are more susceptible to different pollution sources compared to the comprehensive indicator of water quality class. This study helps further the understanding of the effects of cooperative intergovernmental policies and the policy practice of environmental governance in China., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Ding, Gong. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Local government debt plays a vital role in achieving financial financialization and regional economic growth. However, the environmental side effects of the debt-financed infrastructure development model have received little attention. Using a large panel data of Chinese enterprises from 2007 to 2016, we explored the relationship between local government debt in terms of urban investment bonds and corporate pollution emission. We observe that the increase in local government debt exaggerates the intensity of COD emission, equal to 26% of the average. This pollution-promoting effect remains after a series of robust checks. In heterogeneous analysis, local government debt is more likely to affect enterprises located in coastal areas, from pollution intensive industry, operating in regions with weak fiscal strength and operating in regions with low governance quality. The mechanistic exploration from government environmental governance and financial constraint reveals that the local government debt increases corporate pollution when the local fiscal finance emphasizes economy over environmental governance, which has been alleviated after the central government advocates the construction of an environmentally friendly and resource-saving society; An increase of corporate pollution is also possible when local government debt increases the financing constraints of enterprises. We also unveil the source of corporate pollution, and find that if enterprises do not actively adopt environmental strategies either in terms of "end-of-pipe" or "source prevention", they choose to emit more to face with the onslaught of local debt. This study uncovers the environmental impacts of government debt, and explores the potential mechanisms, which can help reduce pollution from local government debt and achieve global climate governance., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The escalating generation of hazardous waste (HW) has become a pressing concern worldwide, straining waste management systems and posing significant health hazards. Addressing this challenge necessitates an accurate understanding of HW generation, which can be achieved through the application of advanced models. The Transformer model, known for its ability to capture complex nonlinear processes, proves invaluable in extracting essential features and making precise HW generation predictions. To enhance comprehension of the key factors influencing HW generation, visualization techniques such as SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) provide insightful explanations. In this study, a novel approach combining classical deep learning algorithms with the Transformer model is proposed, yielding impressive results with an R 2 value of 0.953 and an RMSE of 7.284 for HW prediction. Notably, among the five key fields considered-demographics, socio-economics, industrial production, environmental governance, and medical health-industrial production emerges as the primary contributor, accounting for over 50% of HW generation. Moreover, a high rate of industrial development is anticipated to further accelerate this process., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The main factor behind green economic development is green technology innovation (GTI). Environmental regulation and green finance (GF), as important ways to promote ecological civilization construction, run through the entire procedure of GTI. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of heterogeneous environmental regulation on GTI and the moderating effect of GF on GTI from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, to provide useful ideas for China's economic reform path selection and environmental governance system optimization. This paper uses information from 30 provinces between 2002 and 2019, and a bidirectional fixed model was constructed. The results show that: First, regulatory environmental regulation (ER 1 ), legal environmental regulation (ER 2 ), and economic environmental regulation (ER 3 ) all have greatly boosted the degree of GTI in each province. Second, GF acts as a highly effective moderator between heterogeneous environmental regulation and GTI. Finally, this article investigates how GF can act as a moderator in various circumstances. The beneficial moderating effect of it is found to be more pronounced in inland areas, areas with weak spending on research and development, and areas with high energy consumption. These research results provide valuable references for accelerating the green development process in China., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

As environmental problems continue to intensify, public environmental awareness and participation have become key forces in a modernized environmental governance system. Recognizing the importance of public participation in environmental governance, this study explores the influence of public pressure on environmental pollution and its implications for China's long-term environmental management efforts. Using statistical and internet search data from 284 prefecture-level cities between 2011 and 2020, the study finds that a 1% increase in public environmental concern leads to a 0.009% reduction in pollution. The study also highlights the strengthening effect of government environmental regulation on the impact of public environmental concern. Moreover, regional heterogeneity analysis reveals a stronger effect of public environmental concern in cities facing low economic pressure. The findings of the study provide a reference for the construction of a coordinated and sustainable environmental governance model in China as well as in developing countries., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Liu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The economic differentiation between the north and the south of China, as a long-standing phenomenon of unbalanced regional economic development, is aggravating, and has gradually become a resistance to the construction of a new development pattern and regional coordinated development. Most of the existing studies focus on the comparison of differences between the Eastern, Central and Western regions of China, but there is little discussion on the economic gap between China's North-South economy. In addition, through the literature review, no attention has been paid to the environmental regulation factor that leads to the economic gap between the North and the South. In view of this, the study constructs a benchmark regression model and a non-linear regression model based on the balanced panel data of 285 cities in China from 2004 to 2019, explores the role that environmental regulation plays in the widening of China's North-South economy gap. The results show that, firstly, environmental regulation is significantly conducive to narrowing the economic gap between the North and the South; In addition, with the greater intensity of environmental regulation, the economic gap shows a trend of "narrowing first, expanding then", that is, There exists positive U-shaped nonlinear relationship between them. Finally, the heterogeneity of urban scale leads to significant differences in the position and shape of the positive U-shaped curve, which exists between environmental regulation and China's North-South economy gap. The test results shows that the inflection point level of the U-shaped curve in the North is higher than that in the South. Based on this, the study proposes to adjust environmental policies accordingly under regional differentiated conditions, increase financial investment in improving environmental regulation tools and promote coordinated environmental governance in the North and South regions, to promote regional coordinated and sustainable development, provide empirical evidence and theoretical reference to improve people's livelihood and well-being and ultimately achieve the goal of common prosperity., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Green credit is a major policy innovation to guide enterprises to participate in environmental governance actively. This study uses the data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2016, takes the green credit guideline (GCG) issued in 2012 as a quasi-natural experiment, and uses a difference in difference (DID) model to test the effect of GCG on the enterprises' export green-sophistication (EGS) and its internal and external mechanisms. The study finds that GCG improves enterprises' EGS and research and development (R&D) investment is the intermediation channel for GCG to affect EGS. Results of heterogeneity analysis show that the role of GCG in promoting EGS is significantly reflected in enterprises that the government does not subsidize, enterprises in areas with a low degree of financial marketization development, state-owned enterprises, and enterprises with a high degree of equity incentive., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Environmental protection tax is an important tool for directing environmentally friendly growth in heavily polluting enterprises, but existing research has yet to provide consistent conclusions on whether and how environmental protection tax can promote green innovation in heavily polluting industries. The paper uses a double difference model based on data from Chinese listed companies in heavily polluting industries from 2012 to 2021 to empirically investigate whether environmental protection tax drives green innovation behavior of heavily polluting enterprises. The findings show that the environmental protection tax increases the degree of green innovation in heavily polluting enterprises, primarily through the anti-driving effect, in which an increase in environmental management expenses forces firms to increase their R&D investment, which improves the degree of green technical innovation. Furthermore, the environmental protection tax has a strong promotion effect on heavy polluters' green innovation for state-owned enterprises and those in growing period or located in high marketization regions. However, this promotion effect is insignificant for non-state-owned enterprises and those in recession period, and environmental protection tax hinders green innovation of enterprises in mature period and those located in low marketization regions. Accordingly, it is suggested to improve preferential tax policies, increase investment in corporate green innovation and strengthen the supervision of environmental tax., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Deng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Improving the scale and effectiveness of China's energy conservation and environmental protection fiscal expenditure is crucial to enhancing the capacity of ecological and environmental governance of China, considering the dual perspectives of pollution governance and public health. This article first explains the mechanism by which national energy conservation and environmental protection fiscal expenditure can improve pollution control and promote public health. Secondly, this article scrutinizes the current status and limitations of China's fiscal expenditure, highlighting the contribution of fiscal expenditure in the construction of ecological civilization from the standpoints of environmental governance and public health. Additionally, this study empirically uses DEA to measure the efficiency of the government's fiscal expenditure. Conclusions found that: First, environmental protection fiscal expenditure is mainly focused on technological transformation and pollution control, while relatively little is spent on public health protection. Second, the efficiency of environmental protection fiscal funds is relatively low. These suggestions aim to optimize the positive impact of energy conservation and environmental protection fiscal expenditure for improving pollution governance and promoting public health.

The negative impact of the financialization of non-financial firms cannot be ignored in China. However, existing studies neglect that the government environmental governance is an important influential factor in corporate investment decisions. Using a sample of China's non-financial listed firms from 2007 to 2020, we examine the impact of local governments' energy-saving target constraints on the financialization of local firms in terms of whether local governments set numerically specific energy-saving targets in the Government Work Reports. The main findings of this paper are as follows. First, local governments setting clear energy-saving targets inhibit local firms' financialization and the result holds even after a series of robustness tests. Second, the negative association between local governments' energy-saving target constraints and firm financialization is more pronounced among firms in eastern regions and green provinces. Third, the quality of firm information disclosure and local environmental public supervision enhance the inhibiting effect of local governments' energy-saving target constraints on firm financialization. Fourth, local governments' energy-saving target constraints restrain firm financialization by attracting more external analyst coverage and encouraging internal technological innovation. Moreover, this inhibiting effect can help reduce overinvestment and improve the total factor productivity of firms. Our study provides evidence supporting firm financialization studies from the novel perspective of government environmental governance., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Hu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Low-carbon city pilot policy (LCCP) is an innovative initiative for promoting low-carbon transformation and green development in China, which is of great practical significance for realizing China's vision of "double carbon" on schedule. In this study, LCCP implementation is treated as a "quasi-natural experiment," and the spatial difference-in-differences approach is used to quantitatively examine the carbon reduction effects and impact mechanisms of LCCP using panel data of 283 cities in China from 2006 to 2017. The results show that since 2011, LCCP has significantly reduced the carbon intensity of the pilot cities by 0.13%, resulting from the effects of urban environmental governance, industrial structure optimization, and urban innovation level improvement. Meanwhile, there is a significant spatial spillover effect which results in a 0.9% reduction in carbon intensity of neighboring cities. The spatial spillover range of the reduction effect is about 500 km, which decays with distance. Moreover, the carbon reduction effect of the policy is spatially and temporally heterogeneous, and the reduction effect is more significant for resource-based cities, and different for resource-based cities in different development stages. The above findings provide useful policy insights for constructing low-carbon cities under China's "dual carbon goals" and help to realize the win-win path of green development and carbon reduction transition., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Financial reform becomes a new tool for environmental governance because it can indirectly affect the environment by promoting economic and financial agglomeration and technological innovation. Despite China's aggressive financial reform pilot (FRP) policy since 2012, little is known about whether and how such policy affects haze pollution (HP). We exploit geographic and temporal variations in China's FRP policy and compile a dataset covering 284 cities over the period from 2003 to 2019. Employing a difference-in-differences (DID) approach, we document that China's FRP policy has a negative causal effect on HP in the pilot cities. The estimates obtained from an instrumental variable constructed by religious temples also support the haze-abatement effect of such policy. This effect is largely driven by advances in technological innovation and increases in economic agglomeration, while financial agglomeration is proven to have little effect. Finally, our estimate is particularly pronounced in cities with high levels of economic development, financial development and technological innovation, and that in large-sized and non-mineral resourced cities. Overall, our findings shed light on the importance of financial reform in environmental governance in a developing country., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: The management of rural domestic waste is directly related to the quality of China's rural habitat and the ecological security of the countryside, and is one of the important tasks of rural revitalization., Methods: Based on the perspective of digital technology empowering rural governance, this study uses the China Land Economic Survey (CLES) data to empirically test the impact of digital governance on the level of domestic waste separation for rural residents by constructing the ordered probit model., Results and Discussion: The results show that in the process of rural governance modernization, digital governance helps to improve the level of domestic waste separation for rural residents in the process of rural governance modernization, and the findings still hold after robustness tests. Mechanistic tests showed that digital governance can impact the level of domestic waste separation for rural residents through cadre-mass relationship and institutional trust. The findings of this study provide a new perspective on good environmental governance in China's countryside and have important implications for promoting the improvement of rural habitat quality., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Chen, Xing, Wang and Lu.)

Based on the panel data of prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2019, this paper uses the PSM-DID method to empirically test the internal impact mechanism among high-speed railway opening, inter-regional factor allocation efficiency, and urban environmental governance. The research results show that: (1) There is a serious factor-misallocation problem among prefecture-level cities in China. From 2006 to 2019, the factor misallocation between prefecture-level cities led to an average annual loss of total factor productivity in China's economy of 52.5%, an average labor misallocation of 23.16%, and an average capital misallocation of 18.69%. Since 2013, capital misallocation has exceeded labor misallocation as the main reason for factor misallocation among prefecture-level cities in China. (2) The opening of high-speed railways can promote the efficiency of urban factor allocation through the technological innovation effect, the foreign investment attraction effect, and the population agglomeration effect. The improvement of urban factor allocation efficiency can promote the improvement of urban environmental quality through the effects of industrial structure optimization, income enhancement, and human capital agglomeration. Therefore, the opening of a high-speed railway can improve urban environmental quality through the intermediary effect of improving the efficiency of urban factor allocation; that is, the opening of a high-speed railway has a dual positive effect of economic efficiency and environmental quality improvement. (3) The optimization effect of factor allocation and the environmental governance effect of the opening of high-speed railways have strong urban scale heterogeneity, urban characteristic heterogeneity, and regional heterogeneity. The research content of this paper has important guiding significance for the construction of China's new development paradigm, accelerating the construction of "a unified national market," and green and low-carbon development.

Environmental degradation and ecological devastation have become widespread global concerns in recent years as a result of the expansion of the international economy. China's rapid economic development has been accompanied by a sloppy economic growth model that has damaged the local ecological environment. The Chinese government intends to improve the ecological environment by the end of 2020 in an effort to direct and improve these environmental issues. The strictest environmental laws became effective in 2015. In light of this, this research uses panel data analysis to examine the environmental strategy and environmental governance of Chinese corporations. This article analyses 14,512 samples of listed mainland Chinese enterprises from 2015 to 2020. This research investigates the connection between Corporate Sustainability Development Strategy and Corporate Environmental Governance, as well as the moderating effect of Corporate Environmental Investments.

Atmospheric environment governance requires necessary cost input. Only by accurately calculating regional atmospheric environment governance cost and scientifically allocating it within a region can the operability and realization of the coordinated governance of the regional environment be ensured. Firstly, based on the consideration of avoiding the technological regression of decision-making units, this paper constructs a sequential SBM-DEA efficiency measurement model and solves the shadow prices of various atmospheric environmental factors, that is, their unit governance costs. Secondly, combined with the emission reduction potential, the total regional atmospheric environment governance cost can be calculated. Thirdly, the Shapley value method is modified to calculate the contribution rate of each province to the whole region, and the equitable allocation scheme of the atmospheric environment governance cost is obtained. Finally, with the goal that the allocation scheme based on the fixed cost allocation DEA (FCA-DEA) model converges with the fair allocation scheme based on the modified Shapley value, a modified FCA-DEA model is constructed to achieve the efficiency and fairness of the allocation of atmospheric environment governance cost. The calculation and allocation of the atmospheric environmental governance cost in the Yangtze River Economic Belt in 2025 verify the feasibility and advantages of the models proposed in this paper.

The change from quantity-based taxation to price-based taxation of iron ore resources is an important measure for China to implement the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutralization, and to achieve green economic recovery. To explore the policy's effectiveness in playing its tax function, and improving the environment and production efficiency, this paper takes the reform of the method of resource tax collection as the "quasi natural experiment" object, and selects the balanced panel data of 16 provinces in China from 2011 to 2021. The double difference method is used to evaluate the policy effect of the reform of resource tax collection. The research shows that: (1) Changing the resource tax from a "volume-based tax" to an "ad valorem tax" can effectively increase the government's resource tax revenue, and promote the upgrading of enterprise production technology. (2) The reform of resource tax collection will eliminate some small and medium-sized enterprises that are backward in production technology and bring more pollution to the environment. (3) The reform of resource tax collection mode will increase the number of large and medium-sized iron ore enterprises and promote the standardization of the whole iron ore industry.

The imbalance of regional tourism ecological security (TES) is an important barrier to the sustainable development of tourism. Relying on the spatial correlation network to coordinate the regional TES is effective. Taking 31 provinces in China as examples, social network analysis (SNA) and the quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) are used to analyze the spatial network structure of TES and its influencing factors. The results show that (1) the network density and the number of network relationships increased, while the network efficiency remained at approximately 0.7, and the network hierarchy decreased from 0.376 to 0.234. (2) Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong, Zhejiang, and Henan were always more central than the average and dominated. Anhui, Shanghai, and Guangxi have much lower centrality degrees than the average, with little effect on other provinces. (3) The TES networks could be divided into four parts: "net spillover", "agent", "bidirectional spillover" and "net benefit". (4) The differences in economic development level, tourism industry dependence, tourism load level, educational attainment, investment in environmental governance, and transportation accessibility all had a negative impact on the TES spatial network, whereas geographic proximity had a positive driving effect. In conclusion, the spatial correlation network of provincial TES in China is increasingly close, but the network structure is loose and hierarchical. The core-edge structure is obvious, and there are significant spatial autocorrelations and spatial spillover effects between provinces. The difference in regional influencing factors has a significant effect on the TES network. This paper presents a new research framework for the spatial correlation of TES and provides a Chinese solution to promote the sustainable development of tourism.

The impact of the digital economy is increasing, and its environmental effect has attracted more and more attention. The digital economy promotes the improvement of production efficiency and the government's environmental governance capacity, and contributes to the reduction of urban carbon emission intensity. In order to study the impact of digital economy development on urban carbon emission intensity, this paper analyzes the theoretical basis of the digital economy on the reduction of carbon emission intensity, and then, based on the panel data of cities from 2011 to 2019, uses the two-way fixed effect model for empirical testing. The regression results show that the development of the digital economy has promoted the reduction of carbon emission intensity of cities, promoted the green transformation and upgrading of cities, and lays a foundation for China to achieve carbon peaking and carbon neutralization through the improvement of human capital investment and green innovation level. The basic conclusion is robust by changing core explanatory variables, changing samples, replacing regression methods, and shrinking and truncating tests. The impact of the digital economy on urban carbon emission intensity varies with the location, grade and size of the city. Specifically, the development of the digital economy in cities in the eastern and central regions, cities at or above the sub provincial level, large cities and non-resource-based cities has promoted the reduction of urban carbon emission intensity. In terms of resource-based cities, the development of the digital economy in renewable resource-based cities and resource-based cities dominated by iron ore and oil mining has promoted the decline in urban carbon emission reduction intensity.

Despite increasing evidence documenting the role of the outgoing audit of natural resources (OANRA) in environmental governance and enterprise innovation, little is known about its impact on enterprises' total factor productivity (TFP). To address this question, we treat the OANRA policy launched in 2014 in China as a quasi-natural experiment. We adopt a difference-in-differences-in-differences (DDD) method that exploits three-dimensional variations: city (i.e., OANRA cities versus non-OANRA cities), industry (i.e., more polluting industries versus less polluting ones), and year (i.e., before and after the OANRA policy). Employing a dataset of Chinese industrial listed companies from 2012 to 2019, we reveal that after the OANRA implementation, enterprises' TFP in more polluting industries of OANRA cities decreases by 4.0%. Our mechanism analysis shows that the OANRA restrains the TFP by reducing the financing scale of enterprises and increasing environmental investment of governments. Further, the heterogeneity analysis finds the inhibitory effect of the OANRA is more prominent in large-scale and state-owned enterprises, as well as enterprises located in eastern, low fiscal pressure, and high pollutant emission cities. Our findings provide support for the neoclassical economics hypothesis that the OANRA increases enterprises' compliance costs and decreases their productivity., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Analyzing the spatial difference and convergence of ecological common prosperity (ECP) in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) will be beneficial for the environmental governance and multi-regional economic coordination. Based on the panel data of 97 cities in the YRB from 2003 to 2019, this paper measured and analyzed the index of ECP, the Gini coefficient of ECP, and the convergence of ECP. The results indicate that the ECP of YRB shows a steady growth trend (with an average growth rate of 4.71% yearly) and the overall differences are low (average Gini coefficient is 0.1509 from 2003 to 2019). In different areas, the Gini coefficient between the medium-stream and downstream of YRB is the largest (average value of Gini coefficient is 0.1561). From the decomposition of the overall differences of ECP, the contribution degree of the density of transvariation is the highest for annual average, with a contribution rate of 43.37%, the rate of intra-regional and the inter-regional differences are 31.86% and 24.77%, respectively. The results indicate that the overall differences of ECP in YRB are getting smaller because of cooperation and governance, but the differences between and within regions exist because of geographical feature. There is a significant spatial β convergence trend of ECP, the convergence rate in the upstream and downstream area is faster under the economic geographical matrix than others, and the rate in the medium-stream area is faster under the administrative adjacency matrix. Therefore, strengthening economic and environmental cooperation between and within regions is more beneficial to achieve a better quality of life, as well as the long-term goals of 2035.

Promoting environmental governance to achieve green and low-carbon development is the focus of attention from all walks of life. As a policy tool to control environmental pollution, the effectiveness of environmental audits remains to be verified. Based on China's provincial data from 2004 to 2019, this paper aims to examine the impact and mechanisms of government environmental auditing on environmental quality. Results show that government environmental auditing helps to improve overall environmental quality, but there is a certain lag effect occurring. The heterogeneity test suggests that the impact of environmental auditing on comprehensive environmental quality is more significant when the government competition is smaller, the financial situation is better, and the institutional environment is weaker. Our analysis provides empirical evidence for understanding the role and function of government environmental auditing in environmental governance.

The heavy-polluting industry is inexorably to responsible for the deterioration of the environment. Improving environmental performance is an unavoidable decision for heavy-polluting firms to ensure sustainable development under the policy framework of the carbon peak target. This study provides theoretical and empirical evidence for the effect of environmental protection subsidies on environmental performance. This study constructs basic and mediating effect models to measure how environmental protection subsidies affect environmental performance using panel data of China's heavy-polluting listed firms from 2008 to 2019. This is an important outcome of industrial green transformation in environmental governance and provides a scientific basis for government departments to formulate environmental policies. The results of the empirical analysis show that environmental protection subsidies can improve the environmental performance of heavy-polluting listed firms. After receiving environmental protection subsidies, firms engaged in clean and green production through green technology innovation, thereby reducing external environmental pollution and improving their environmental performance. The mediating role of green technology innovation in the relationship between environmental protection subsidies and environmental performance is significant only in state-owned firms and firms in Eastern China. The research results may further guide the direction of green development of heavy-polluting industries, and thus promote harmonious development between the environment and the economy., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Du et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

China's rapid economic growth is accompanied by industrial agglomeration (IA) and environmental pollution. Although IA has played an important role in reducing environmental pollution, its effect on carbon emissions is still debatable and deserves further study. In this context, this paper constructs a two-sector general equilibrium model including households and firms to explore the mechanisms of IA on carbon emissions and finds that IA mainly affects carbon emissions through the agglomeration effect and congestion effect. Then, based on the balanced panel data for 30 Chinese provinces from 2003 to 2019, this study employs the dynamic spatial panel model to investigate the nexus between different types of IA and carbon emissions. The empirical results reveal that a significant positive spatial dependence is verified in the regional carbon emissions of China, indicating that carbon emissions exhibit a remarkably spatial spillover effect. Meanwhile, there are significant variations in the influence of different types of IA on carbon emissions. Specifically, specialized agglomeration (SA) positively affects carbon emissions, while the impact of diversified agglomeration (DA) on carbon emissions is negative, implying that China's DA may contribute to carbon emission control. In addition, there is regional heterogeneity in the effect of IA on carbon emissions, with the western region having a significantly greater effect than the eastern and central regions. Therefore, the Chinese government should follow the notion of integrating territory administration and interregional communication and formulate regionally differentiated environmental governance policies to promote carbon emission reduction in the future., Competing Interests: The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest regarding this work., (Copyright © 2023 Xianpu Xu.)

Waste classification is the key initiative to solve environmental pollution and achieve resource recycling, environmental improvement, and high-quality development in rural areas. Under the perspective of "external support-internal drive", this paper adopts the survey data of 2628 rural residents in Jiangsu province to analyze the influence and spatial effect of policy support (PS) on the behavior and effectiveness of rural residents' domestic waste separation and the mediating effect of environmental protection perception using the PSM and Sobel test. The study found that: (1) PS has a significant positive effect on the governance of the domestic residents' waste classification in rural areas. The variation in classification behavior (BWC) is more obvious than classification effectiveness (EWC). (2) PS has a significant difference in the positive influence on waste separation by regions. Specifically, the enhancement effect of PS on BWC decreases from south to north, and the enhancement effect on EWC is more obvious in southern Jiangsu than in central Jiangsu, but not significant in northern Jiangsu. (3) The mediating effect indicates that PS promotes the enhancement of BWC and EWC by strengthening farmers' environmental protection perceptions, and the effect of EWC enhancement is more obvious. Drawing on the results of this paper, the government should improve the policy support system for waste classification, strengthen environmental protection-related policy publicity and knowledge popularization, stimulate the endogenous motivation of rural residents, narrow the regional environmental governance gap, and promote green and sustainable development in rural areas.

Carbon tax is an important economic instrument in achieving the goal of carbon emission reduction and sustainable development. This paper investigates the effects of carbon tax on carbon emission reduction in China. First, a non-competitive input-output table for Carbon Emissions of 28 sectors in China after Carbon Tax was established, based on the "2018 China Non-competitive Input-Output Table (42 Sectors)" and the carbon emission data of sectors provided by China Carbon Emission Accounts and Datasets (CEADs). Then, an input-output price model was established to study the changes on product price, GDP, employment, and carbon dioxide emissions of 28 sectors after carbon taxing ranged from 10 to 200. When the carbon tax rate reaches 200 yuan/ton, the inflation rate will be 5.907%, the total GDP will be decreased to 1.910%, the total labor force will be decreased to 1.744%, and the total carbon emission reduction rate will be increased to 8.171%. Results showed that with the increases in carbon tax, the inflation rate was increased, the rate of carbon emission reduction was increased, and the negative effects on GDP and employment were also increased. Suggestions on policy making, such as combination of carbon taxing and carbon trading, dynamic adjustment mechanism, tax neutrality, and forcing active carbon reduction, were proposed to minimize the adverse effect of levying carbon tax. The results from this paper would provide a reference for the policy making on carbon management.

The current study empirically estimates the impact of local government environmental governance on enterprise technological innovation from the perspective of a green political performance assessment of local governments with Chinese characteristics. Fourteen years of data (from 2006 to 2019) on pollutant emissions, and the patents of A-share listed companies were collected from 230 cities in China. A fixed effect model and tool variable method were applied to empirically analyze the objectives of the study. The results show that the environmental governance formulated by the local government has regional differences, which are shown as lower governance indicators for underdeveloped areas and higher governance indicators for developed areas. Environmental governance has a greater promotion effect on technological innovation in enterprises in developed regions, as well as in large and private enterprises. Moreover, mechanism analysis showed that the local governments preferred the path of financial subsidies to promote the level of technological innovation in enterprises. This study provides a foundation for attaining the "win-win" scenario of local government environmental stewardship and high-quality green economic growth.

Enterprises have emerged as primary actors in environmental protection owing to the increasingly severe global energy crisis and environmental pollution. Companies can reduce operational costs, achieve environmental social responsibility, and enhance their green image by increasing their green investments. Simultaneously, companies can gain support from investors, governments, and other stakeholders for improving their sustainable development. This study uses fixed-effects regression models to analyze the impact of green investment on corporate sustainability in Chinese listed companies for the period from 2010 to 2020. It also investigates the moderating effects of government environmental subsidies, investor attention, and executives' overseas experience on the relationship between green investment and corporate sustainability. The data used in this study were not only obtained from the China Stock Market & Accounting Research (CSMAR) database but also collected manually from the annual reports and social responsibility reports of listed companies using web crawler technology. And the robustness test was conducted by removing the epidemic year and replacing the range of independent variables and 2SLs. This study uses Stata 17.0 to filter and process the data. The results show that green investment can significantly improve the sustainability of enterprises; besides, government subsidies, investors' attention, and executives' overseas experience all play a positive role in moderating the positive effect of green investment on the sustainable development of enterprises. Further analysis of this study finds that the moderating effect is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises and highly polluting enterprises. This study contributes to broadening the theory related to the green development of enterprises and environmental governance and provides theoretical support for enterprises to make green investment decisions and green transformations.

With the aim of achieving the goal of ecological livability in Chinese rural society, the issue of rural environmental governance has received great attention from the CCP and the government. However, due to local governments' model of development in exchange for economic interests and the "urban and rural binary" structure of environmental governance, rural environmental governance faces many dilemmas, such as lack of normative standards, lack of environmental governance subjects, and lack of judicial security. In order to improve the development of rural ecological civilization and realize ecologically friendly agriculture, this paper proposes a solution path for rural environmental governance from the perspective of the idea of the community with a shared future for humanity. Specifically, this solution path includes establishing the concepts of cooperation and governance of environmental protection, improving villagers' participation in environmental protection, balancing economic and environmental interests in rural environmental governance, and building a long-term mechanism for the rule of law in rural environmental governance.

This paper investigates how local governments coordinate the relationship between economic growth targets (EGT) and environmental protection targets (EPT) and the impact of such coordination on firm's environmental performance. Using the pollution emission data of China's industrial firms covering 2003 to 2013, we show that firms in the cities where officials are setting overweighted economic growth targets have more sulfur dioxide intensity, while the central government's hard constraints on EPT included in the official performance evaluation system could partially mitigate the environmental externality of the economic growth target. Further, we find that overweighted EGT significantly decreases firms' desulfurization facilities, capacity, and ratio, while the hard constraint of EPT helps mitigate this negative relationship. We also find that the positive relationship between overweight EGT and firm emissions is more pronounced in the dirty industry, while the hard constraint of EPT helps to mitigate this relationship. The above results help to identify an underlying mechanism of environmental regulation. Finally, we show that converting the hard constraints of environmental protection targets to self-constraint by local government officials could reverse the environmental externality of the economic growth target.

Many countries have formulated strict environmental regulation policies, but unfortunately, environmental pollution is still severe. We believe that this phenomenon may result from institutional factors. We study whether local government competition affects the dependence on polluting industries and test it with the transaction data of China's land market. We find that the decline in the economic ranking of cities increases the scale of land transferred to polluting industries, and the more the ranking decline, the larger the scale of land in polluting industries. Besides, we analyze the impact of the first decline in the urban economic ranking, finding that the land transfer scale of polluting industries exhibits a trend of slowing down after a rapid rise in the short term. Heterogeneity analysis shows that officials with lower education levels and before-retirement age will dependent more on polluting industries to a greater extent when they face local government competition, and cities with economic growth lower than the national average will increase their dependence on polluting industries to a greater extent. This paper provides new insights into the causes of the environmental governance dilemma, which also highlights the need to weaken economic indicators and strengthen environmental indicators in government performance assessment., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

China's economic development has gradually entered a new period of slowing down and changing from quantity to quality, which has put forward higher requirements for environmental quality. How to better fulfill environmental responsibilities and realize a virtuous circle of "environmental protection for development" and a value growth model are essential issues that enterprises should consider and solve. Overconfidence, as one of the significant psychological characteristics of management, has caused more and more attention to its economic consequences. In order to clarify the internal logical relationship between the two and help enterprises optimize their environmental responsibility decisions, the paper is based on upper echelon theory and stakeholder theory. It focuses on the micro-situation of the corporate, empirically testing the influence of management overconfidence on corporate environmental responsibility by using the OLS regression analysis method, taking the manufacturing listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange of China from 2010 to 2017 as the research sample. The study discusses the moderating effect of government environmental governance and media attention on the relationship between management overconfidence and corporate environmental responsibility. The empirical results show a negative correlation between management overconfidence and corporate environmental responsibility. Both government environmental governance and media attention will weaken the negative correlation between management overconfidence and corporate environmental responsibility. Further research finds that management overconfidence has a weakening effect on corporate value, and corporate environmental responsibility plays a partial mediating role between management overconfidence and corporate value.

China is currently facing the arduous tasks of energy conservation, emission reduction and structural transformation, making it of great significance to study the digital transformation of heavily polluting enterprises. As an important informal regulatory system, public environmental concerns affect corporate environmental behavior by increasing external environmental pressure. This study uses the data of listed companies in China's heavily polluting industries from 2012 to 2020 and Baidu Index data to analyze how public environmental concerns affect the digital transformation of heavily polluting enterprises. This study finds that public environmental concerns can significantly promote the digital transformation of heavily polluting enterprises. For non-state-owned, green image and high-tech enterprises, the impact is even more obvious. Furthermore, based on the structural and hierarchical perspective of enterprise digital transformation, we find that public environmental concerns significantly promote digital technology application. This study puts forward some suggestions for government departments to formulate environmental protection regulations, enterprises to fulfill their green responsibilities and the public to participate in environmental governance.