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Copyright of China Population Resources & Environment is the property of Shandong Normal University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of China Population Resources & Environment is the property of Shandong Normal University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of China Population Resources & Environment is the property of Shandong Normal University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As the integrated regional development of the Yangtze River Delta has become a national strategy of China, the scope of regional integration has expanded and regional economic geography has changed, which has a profound impact on regional environmental governance. Based on the 3D analysis framework of new economic geography, this paper used the 3D analysis framework of new economic geography to study the impact of regional market segmentation, density, distance, and other economic and geographical factors on urban environmental governance in the Yangtze River Delta. Based on the panel data of 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta from 2003 to 2019, this paper used the relative price method to calculate the market segmentation index of the cities in the delta, built a comprehensive evaluation index system for environmental governance, and used the global entropy weight method to measure the urban environmental governance index. The empirical research mainly drew the following conclusions: ① The level of urban environmental governance in the Yangtze River Delta was on the rise, and there were obvious regional differences in environmental governance. These regional differences mainly came from the gap between provincial administrative regions, but the regional gap showed a trend of convergence as a whole. ② Judging from the impact of economic and geographical factors on urban environmental governance in the Yangtze River Delta, market segmentation had a significant negative impact on urban environmental governance. After using instrumental variables to alleviate endogenous biases, market segmentation had a greater negative effect on urban environmental governance. The relationship between environmental governance and economic density, as well as between environmental governance quality and population density, showed an inverted U-shaped relationship. The improvement of traffic accessibility was conducive to improving urban environmental governance. The geographical distance from the regional central city had a significant negative impact on urban environmental governance. Robustness tests were carried out from different perspectives, and the above research conclusions still held. ③ Environmental governance had positive spatial autocorrelation. The spatial spillover effect of economic geographical factors such as market segmentation, economic density, and population density on the environmental governance of surrounding cities was just opposite to its impact on local environmental governance. Therefore, it is necessary to speed up the unified large market construction and market integration in the Yangtze River Delta, enhance the accessibility of transportation between cities in the delta, control the economic density and population density of cities, prevent environmental governance risks caused by excessive economic density and population density, build a long-term synergistic mechanism, and promote the coordinated improvement of urban environmental governance in the delta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of China Population Resources & Environment is the property of Shandong Normal University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of China Population Resources & Environment is the property of Shandong Normal University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of China Population Resources & Environment is the property of Shandong Normal University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Studying the effects of expected economic growth targets and environmental constraint targets set by Chinese local governments at the beginning of the year on high-quality development can provide empirical evidence for optimizing expected target management, improving macro-control, and fulfilling governance efficiency in the new development stage to some extent. Therefore, based on the theory of economic growth accounting and the stochastic frontier model, this paper calculated the level of high-quality development at the urban level, extracted the economic growth targets and environmental constraint targets from the Report on the Work of the Government with text analysis, constructed instrumental variables based on the spatial weight matrix, and then discussed the effects of the expected development targets formulated by local governments on high-quality development, conditional heterogeneity, and mechanisms. The results showed that: ① Excessive economic growth targets were not conducive to high-quality development, while environmental constraints targets had a significant role in promoting it and could slow down the erosion effect of excessive economic growth targets on high-quality development. This conclusion still held after solving a series of robustness tests, such as the endogenous bias. ② Heterogeneity analysis found that, with the implementation of the ecological civilization concept, China' s economy could achieve a win-win situation of quantity increase and quality improvement. To better promote high-quality development, the target positioning of cities with good economic foundations should weaken economic increment and strengthen environmental constraints, and the growth targets and environmental constraints set by local governments should be endogenous to their own regional resource endowments and leave appropriate elastic spaces. ③ The mechanism test showed that improving the economic growth targets reduced the level of innovation and raised the amount of new investment in the region, which was not conducive to high-quality development. Environmental constraints could promote technological innovation and limit the blind expansion of new investment, thus promoting high-quality development. Based on the above research conclusions, this paper summarizes policy implications from the aspects of political performance evaluation, formulation of expected development targets, technological innovation, and green development to promote the synergy between economic growth and green development in China and the synchronization of expected target management and high-quality development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategic deployment of building a comprehensive socialist modern state has put forward new requirements for the green and low-carbon transformation of China's economic and social development. As the core subject of promoting this process, the incentive mechanism for enterprises to practice environmental protection and emission reduction and take on green responsibilities has become a hot topic of social and academic attention. This paper examined the impact of the implementation of the low-carbon city pilot policy on the quality of environmental, social and governance (ESG) of listed companies using the staggered difference-in-differences model based on microdata of Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2021 as a representative low carbon transition policy and a quasi-natural experiment. The findings were as follows: 1 The low-carbon city pilot policy implemented in China since 2010 significantly improved the ESG quality of listed companies. The policy resulted in an average increase of 27.42% in the ESG index of listed companies in pilot cities. This result held after a series of robustness tests, including controlling for other policy interferences, propensity score matching, and placebo tests. 2 Under the influence of this policy, pressure from government regulation and public opinion supervision became a crucial driver for companies to autonomously enhance their ESG quality. 3 Green financial support helped alleviate corporate financing constraints and promoted green technological innovation, serving as an important mechanism for improving corporate ESG quality under the low-carbon transformation policy. Among these mechanisms, green technological innovation exhibited a trend toward both quantity and quality improvement. Innovation in energy-saving green technologies played a more significant role in enhancing corporate ESG quality in the context of the low-carbon city pilot policy. This study demonstrates that China's low-carbon city pilot policy not only promoted regional green and low-carbon transformation at the macro level but also encouraged enterprises to embrace the concept of low-carbon transformation and undertake responsibilities for sustainable and green development at the micro level. While enriching and supplementing the research on factors influencing corporate ESG quality, this study also provides theoretical and decision-making support for China's achievement of its 'dual carbon' goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the background that China has entered the middle-late stage of population urbanization, conducting a multi-dimensional exploration of its development pattern from a structural level under the superficial phenomenon of rapid urbanization is conducive to a clear identification and understanding of the internal mechanisms and rules of urbanization, the discovery of problems existing in the process of urbanization, and the proposal of rational response strategies. This paper mainly used the county-level data from China's sixth and seventh population censuses, taking the prefecture-level administrative region as the basic statistical unit, to comprehensively analyze the development pattern of China's population urbanization from 2010 to 2020 in terms of changes in the urban and rural populations, sources of urban population growth, and the spatial distribution of the urban population at the provincial and regional levels. The results showed that: (J) The increase in the population urbanization ratio was the result of the joint effect of changes in the urban and rural populations, and the contribution of urban population growth was slightly higher than that of rural population decline. © The migration of the rural population to cities was still the absolute main force driving urban population growth in China, followed by territorial adjustment growth and natural growth. © The spatial distribution of the urban population tended to be dispersed, and the contribution of county-residing urban population changes to urbanization was slightly higher than that of urban population changes in urban areas. ® The urbanization ratio increase in the northeast region was mainly the result of the decrease in the rural population. Natural negative growth and net outflows occurred in the urban population. Moreover, most of this region experienced serious losses in the county-residing urban population. Accordingly, different levels of governments should promptly examine the structural characteristics of their urbanization in the past, continuously promote economic development, and improve public service supply based on the characteristics of their own natural conditions and conditions of urban population changes and distributions to formulate more targeted population urbanization strategies and to explore a sustainable population urbanization path that meets their own reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New urbanization plays an important role in China's regional economic growth and green transformation. In this stage of high-quality economic development, the effect of the government-led new urbanization policy on reducing pollution and carbon emissions needs to be verified. Based on the data of 180 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2020, this paper built a difference-indifferences model from the two dimensions of ' pollution' and ' carbon emission' to empirically test the effect of the reduction of pollution and carbon emissions in new urbanization and its influencing mechanisms. The results showed that: (J) The new urbanization construction had a significant effect of reducing pollution and carbon emissions, which was characterized by its annual increase. The conclusion was still robust after validity and robustness tests. © Based on the ' location-feature-scale' dimensional urban heterogeneity, the effect of the reduction of pollution and carbon emissions was more significant in the samples of eastern cities, non-resource-based cities, cities with high human capital, and larger cities. Quantile estimation results showed that this effect in the new urbanization construction was increasing marginally. © Mechanism analysis showed that the new urbanization construction could not only directly promote the reduction of pollution and carbon emissions, but also effectively promote this reduction by fostering the overall upgrading of industrial structure, service structure, and performance-based technological innovation. However, the impact of input-based technological innovation on this reduction was not obvious. This article offers new ideas for the next stage of regional pollution control in China. It is suggested that the government should promote the synergy between the new urbanization and the reduction of pollution and carbon emissions and release the dividends of the new urbanization in regional green development in a more effective way with the help of industrial structure upgrading and performance-based technological innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic agglomeration is an objective law that economic operations must follow to achieve an efficient state, and it is also an important driving force for China' s economy to transform from high-speed growth to high-quality development. Public health is a major event related to the national economy and the people' s livelihood, especially urban public health, which has long been the focus of all sectors of society. With the further promotion of economic agglomeration, the characteristics of urban public health in China are also undergoing profound transformation. It is an urgent and important research topic to explore whether and how the goal of 'going healthy in agglomeration' can be achieved from the perspective of urban scale. Based on the panel data of 283 cities in China from 2003 to 2020, this paper used the generalized spatial panel two-stage least squares method (GS2SLS) to explore the impact of economic agglomeration on urban public health and its mechanisms, and especially examined the heterogeneous impact of the coordinated and adaptive agglomeration mode and matching unbalanced agglomeration mode on urban public health. The research results showed that: ① There was a significant positive spatial effect of urban public health in China. While the public health of one city was constantly affecting neighboring cities, it was also increasingly affected by the same nature of neighboring cities. ② At the national level, the promoting effect of economic agglomeration on public health was far greater than the inhibition effect, which demonstrated significant promotion characteristics of economic agglomeration on urban public health, and realized the goal of 'going healthy in agglomeration.' ③ The heterogeneity analysis of regional and city levels showed that economic agglomeration still had a significant promoting effect on urban public health, but the promoting effect decreased from the eastern region to the central region to the western region, and from first-tier cities to second-tier cities to third-tier cities, which exactly corresponded to the spatial characteristics of economic agglomeration. Once again, it showed that the development path of 'going healthy in agglomeration' had practical feasibility. ④ Heterogeneity analysis of the agglomeration mode showed that the coordinated and adaptive agglomeration mode was more conducive to improving urban public health than the matching unbalanced agglomeration mode, and it was easier to achieve the win-win goal of economic growth and public health governance. ⑤ The mechanism test showed that economic agglomeration could improve urban public health in at least three ways: promoting income improvement, boosting ecological environment governance, and correcting the mismatch of public health resources. Therefore, to further improve China′s urban public health, we should build a collaborative and efficient public health linkage mechanism, consolidate and expand the foundation and scale of economic agglomeration, promote the transformation of economic agglomeration mode and quality change, and create a coordinated and balanced development pattern of economic agglomeration so as to fully release the health promotion effect of economic agglomeration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employment is the foundation of people ’s livelihoods, and a low-carbon transition is a key development theme for China in the future. The impact of reducing CO2 emissions as a hard macroeconomic constraint on the labor market is an important economic issue. This paper used China’s low-carbon city pilot policy as a representative policy to study the low-carbon transition. Firstly, based on the analysis of typical economic facts and policy texts, it was found that there might exist two distinct low-carbon transition approaches in China. The study then examined the differences in the policy impact on labor employment in the first and second batches of pilot cities, analyzed the underlying mechanisms, and finally constructed a general equilibrium model based on the empirical findings to further elaborate the heterogeneous impact pathways from a theoretical perspective. The study showed that: ① There was a difference in the policy impact on employment in the first and second batches of pilot cities. The policy increased employment in secondary and tertiary industries and total employment in the first batch of pilot cities, but it increased employment in tertiary industries and decreased employment in secondary industries in the second batch of pilot cities. ② There was a difference in the mechanisms of policy impact on employment in the first and second batches of pilot cities. Under the influence of the policy, the first batch of pilot cities adopted the low-carbon transition approach of focusing resources on the secondary industry, while the second batch of pilot cities adopted the lowcarbon transition approach of focusing resources on the tertiary industry. ③ The low-carbon transition approaches of the two batches of pilot cities had their own advantages and disadvantages. The approach of the first batch of pilot cities achieved a reduction in total CO2 emissions and an increase in the number of jobs, with the disadvantage of increasing the intensity of CO2 emissions and reducing the disposable income of workers, failing to improve the quality of employment. However, the approach of the second batch of pilot cities reduced the intensity of CO2 emissions, increased employment in the tertiary industry, and increased the disposable income of workers, effectively improving the quality of employment but failing to achieve a reduction in total CO2 emissions and an increase in total employment. Accordingly, China’s goals of reaching peak carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality can be achieved either by industrial transformation and upgrading or by enhancing the development of the tertiary industry, but the best way is to develop the tertiary industry on the basis of industrial transformation and upgrading without blindly adopting the de-industrialization approach to achieve the peak carbon emission goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructed the mismatch index of land supply structure by cities in China from 2010 to 2019 and analyzed the direct effect and spatial spillover effect of land supply structure mismatch on urban carbon emission efficiency using the spatial Durbin econometric model. The results showed that: ① There were obvious regional differences and interactive forms of spatial strategies in the mismatch of urban land supply structures in China. The mismatch index of urban land supply structure in the eastern region was the lowest, while that in the northeast region was the highest. There was a 'race to the top' type of spatial strategic interaction in residential land supply mismatch, industrial land supply mismatch, and commercial service land supply mismatch. ② Due to the competitive effect of economic growth among cities, urban carbon emission efficiency had a significant positive spatial spillover effect. The estimation results of the spatial Durbin econometric model showed that the mismatch of land supply structures inhibited the improvement of the carbon emission efficiency of cities themselves as well as spatially related cities. ③ In terms of the degree of land supply mismatch in different industries, urban residential land supply mismatch, industrial land supply mismatch, and commercial service land supply mismatch were not conducive to improving the carbon emission efficiency of cities themselves as well as spatially related cities. ④ The mechanism analysis showed that, with the intensification of competition in attracting investment and fiscal and tax competition between cities, the negative effect of the mismatch of land supply structure on the carbon emission efficiency of spatially related cities and cities themselves was greater. In dimensional terms, the supply mismatch of residential land and commercial service land only inhibited the carbon emission efficiency of spatially related cities and cities themselves through fiscal and tax competition, while the supply mismatch of industrial land only inhibited the carbon emission efficiency of spatially related cities and cities themselves through competition in attracting investment. In order to improve the efficiency of urban carbon emissions, local governments should improve the lowcarbon oriented urban land governance system, curb the vicious competition of land resource allocation among local governments, constantly eliminate the micro-factors of urban land supply structure mismatch, and promote regional collaborative carbon emission reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As urbanization enters its mid- to late-stage and the household registration system is steadily liberalized, inter-city mobility is replacing urban-rural mobility as the mainstream of population migration, and the environment is playing an increasingly important role in the cross-city migration decisions of the population. Understanding the positive feedback mechanism between environmental governance, population mobility, and more far-reaching economic impact is important for strengthening confidence in the resonance between environmental governance and high-quality development and activating the dynamics of Chinese modernization. This article constructed a quantitative spatial model (QSM) incorporating labor migration to structurally estimate the changes in urban labor productivity and its influencing factors from 2008 to 2020, and assessed the economic impact of haze management based on the calibrated quantitative model with realistic data from 285 local cities in China. The results showed that: 1 Haze control could improve both urban labor productivity and residents' welfare, and the policy overlay effect of household registration reform could further strengthen this positive effect, and haze control would boost labor productivity by 7.75% on average under the scenario of sufficient labor mobility. 2 There were multiple heterogeneities in the effect of haze control on urban labor productivity, with megacities and cities with severe haze pollution having a greater average labor productivity increase from haze control. 3 A counterfactual simulation of a series of actions under the 'dual carbon' goals found that the government's mandatory environmental targets improved urban labor productivity while urging cities to improve air quality, and that the 'dual carbon' goals were more effective in regional coordination than in key regions. These goals were more effective than the 'plus' policy imposed on the key regions. Therefore, in the future, we need to focus on the joint efforts of household registration system reform and environmental governance and further 'unbundle' population mobility to build a unified national market, so as to effectively release the structural dividends of labor mobility across regions, establish common governance goals to implement multifaceted collaborative haze control, and activate labor and various production factors based on a more livable urban environment to further promote urban economic potential. To further promote the high-quality development of the urban economy, we have set up a common governance goal to implement multi-faceted cooperative haze control and activate the potential of the labor force and various production factors based on a more livable urban environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]