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This study focuses on exploring the factors influencing why companies engage in greenhushing decisions in the cultural backgrounds of China and Republic of Korea. Structural equation modeling analysis indicates that in these two countries, reputational risk not only directly leads to corporate greenhushing behavior, but also exerts its influence through conservatism as a mediating factor. Reputational risk causes companies to exhibit conservatism, which in turn leads to the adoption of greenhushing behavior. Furthermore, tests for moderation effects revealed that, in the Chinese sample data, a transparent information disclosure mechanism has the ability to mitigate the impact of reputational risk on corporate greenhushing behavior, as well as to alleviate the influence of conservatism on corporate greenhushing behavior. In the South Korean sample data, a transparent information disclosure mechanism can moderate the impact of reputational risk on conservatism and corporate greenhushing behavior. Finally, the fsQCA method is tested to derive the different configurations and pathways that lead to the strong emergence of greenhushing behavior in companies in China and Republic of Korea, as well as to identify the most influential pathways. This study provides substantial theoretical support for further exploration of the causal mechanisms of corporate greenhushing behavior and promotion of cross‐cultural comparisons and learning in the international environmental management field. In addition, provides rich empirical support and theoretical guidance for corporate environmental management decision‐making and policy formulation. The findings highlight the further standardization and strengthening of transparent information disclosure mechanisms will be an important direction for future environmental policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices play an increasingly important role in achieving sustainable development goals. Drawing on institutional theory, this paper empirically explores whether and how green financial policy affects corporate ESG performance. Taking China's pilot policy for green finance reform and innovation (GFP) as a quasi‐natural experiment, we employ the difference‐in‐differences model to investigate the causal relationship between green financial policy and corporate ESG performance. We find that the GFP significantly improves corporate ESG performance. The results are robust to a series of checks such as parallel trend examination, placebo test, mitigation of omitted variable bias, alternative variables, and the exclusion of contemporaneous policies. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive impact of GFP on corporate ESG performance is more pronounced for firms with tighter financial constraints, higher agency costs, and more external pressures. On this basis, we further document that the positive impact of GFP on corporate ESG performance is more pronounced for investee firms with more institutional ownership. The above findings indicate that the formal institution of government‐led green financial policy can positively affect corporate ESG performance, and market participants‐institutional investors help to strengthen this policy effect. Overall, our study sheds light on the significant role of green financial policy in promoting corporate sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study focuses on a new environmental policy tool, environmental constraint target policy, which minimizes the implementation bias of environmental objectives through effective decomposition of environmental targets and goal management, thus ensuring the expected environmental performance. Using longitudinal data (2006–2019) covering 11,252 Chinese firm‐year observations in high‐pollution industries, we find that environmental constraint target policy promotes firms' green innovation. Such an effect is stronger when the firms are intensively monitored and weaker when the firms are located in a region with lower environmental enforcement capability. Further analysis reveals that environmental constraint target policy can enhance firms' economic performance by promoting green innovation, thereby facilitating sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ship recycling industry is a labor‐intensive field that often grapples with the issue of workers not adopting appropriate practices that are environmentally friendly and safe. However, the existing literature largely overlooks the consideration of workers' environmentally friendly and safety behaviors. Therefore, this study aims to explore the determinants of workers' environmentally friendly and safety behaviors during ship recycling by proposing a theoretical model that incorporates the theory of planned behavior. Survey data were collected from 170 participants in the ship recycling industry in China. Subsequently, structural equation modeling was applied to evaluate the proposed model. The findings highlight that factors such as attitude, perceived behavioral control, subjective norms, safety awareness, and perceived susceptibility directly or indirectly affect workers' environmentally friendly and safety behavior. The study offers important implications for ship recycling companies and environmental policies, fostering the emergence of sustainable development, and stakeholder engagement in the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mountainous agriculture supports 15% of the global population, but its sustainability is facing challenges with the social transition. Honghe Hani Rice Terrace System (HHRTS), China, a double world‐level heritage, performs strong resilience to challenges. Available studies on HHRTS examines its sustainability from some perspectives but lack a systemic elaboration on its sustainable mechanism. This study extensively examines the literature on HHRTS and offers a comprehensive analysis of its sustainability. The findings suggest that mountainous agricultural sustainability depends on the support from relatively enough water and land resources and diverse employment based on these resources (economic sustainability), the environmental stability based on reasonable landscape structure, rich biodiversity and ecological farming methods (environmental sustainability), and social stability based on the well‐developing social structure, efficient management system, and relevant cultural restraint and guidance (social sustainability) as well as the dynamic interaction among the three dimensions. Among them, traditional knowledge and cultures play a positive role in maintaining the stability of terraced landscapes, but their role is weakening with industrialization and urbanization. This study provides a systemic explanation of a dynamic evolution mechanism that the economic and social factors drive local people to maintain a mountainous agricultural system from the agricultural society to the industrial society based on the theory of planned behavior. This study also provides abundant local knowledge, experiences, and an analytical framework for reconstructing a sustainable mountainous agricultural system in the socio‐economic transformation stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of a firm's corporate environmental strategy is contingent on a practical mechanism between leaders and employees as stakeholders to spread a collective stimulus of responsible behaviors from top to bottom. This study builds on the theoretical underpinnings of social identity theory to examine the influence of corporate environmental strategy on employees' voluntary green behavior through the mediating role of middle managers' environmentally responsible leadership and the moderating role of CEOs' environmentally responsible leadership. The sample included 1532 middle managers‐subordinate dyads from 91 automotive firms and their supply chain business partners in China. Multi‐source data on CEOs' and managers' environmentally responsible leadership and employees' voluntary green behavior were collected in two stages and analyzed with multilevel structural equation modeling through the MPlus 8.3 software. The findings supported all the hypothesized relationships in predicting employees' voluntary green behavior, including the mediating and moderating mechanisms. Theoretical and managerial implications are offered, along with limitations and suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical Zone Science (CZS) explores the deep evolution of landscapes from the base of the groundwater or the saprolite‐rock interface to the top of vegetation, the zone that supports all terrestrial life. Here we propose a framework for CZS to evolve further as a discipline, building on 1st generation CZOs in natural systems and 2nd generation CZOs in human‐modified systems, to incorporate human behaviour for more holistic understanding in a 3rd generation of CZOs. This concept was tested in the China‐UK CZO programme (2016–2020) that established four CZOs across China on different lithologies. Beyond conventional CZO insights into soil resources, biogeochemical cycling and hydrology across scales, surveys of farmers and local government officials led to insights into human‐environment interactions and key pressures affecting the socio‐economic livelihoods of local farmers. These learnings combined with the CZS data identified knowledge exchange (KE) opportunities to unravel diverse factors within the Land‐Water‐Food Nexus, that could directly improve local livelihoods and environmental conditions, such as reduction in fertilizer use, contributing toward Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and environmental policies. Through two‐way local KE, the local cultural context and socio‐economic considerations were more readily apparent alongside the environmental rationale for policy and local action to improve the sustainability of farming practices. Seeking solutions to understand and remediate CZ degradation caused by human‐decision making requires the co‐design of CZS that foregrounds human behavior and the opinions of those living in human modified CZOs. We show how a new transdisciplinary CZO approach for sustainable Earth futures can improve alignment of research with the practical needs of communities in stressed environments and their governments, supporting social‐ecological and planetary health research agendas and improving capacity to achieve SDGs. Plain Language Summary: Critical Zone Science (CZS) explores how landscapes evolve from below the Earth's surface to the top of trees, supporting life on Earth. CZS was established by studying pristine landscapes, with little or no human modification of the land, water and soil. These pristine natural systems are rare in our modern world. In this paper, we have proposed a new approach to CZS for studying the human‐modified landscapes that dominate our world. To help explain why this is needed, we have re‐drawn a diagram explaining how the critical zone works to show the role of humans. We also give examples of research in three regions of China where we learned from local farmers living in our study areas, to improve our scientific understanding and to try to align our research process to address the biggest pressures affecting their lives. This new approach to CZS can help focus research to directly support local people and improve our ability to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Key Points: Integrating local knowledge with critical zone science can improve interpretation of scientific findings and delivery of Sustainable Development GoalsThird generation science can improve alignment of research with the practical needs of communities and governmentsA new conceptual diagram for human‐modified critical zones is produced to illustrate transdisciplinary Critical Zone Observatories for sustainable Earth futures [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many companies have become aware of the importance of green creativity for sustainable development in the face of an increasingly critical global environmental situation. As employee's green creativity serves as an important foundation for corporate green creativity, we divide green creativity at the employee level into green incremental and radical creativity and construct a theoretical framework to assess the effects of corporate environmental ethics on these two types of green creativity. We distribute 195 valid leader–employee matching questionnaires to a variety of companies in China. We find that corporate environmental ethics has a positive effect on both incremental and radical green creativity. Furthermore, we discover that employee environmental commitment partially mediates the association between corporate environmental ethics and the two types of green creativity identified above. Sustainable human resources management (HRM) plays a moderating role between corporate environmental ethics and environmental commitment and moderates the indirect effects of corporate environmental ethics on the two types of green creativity through the promotion of environmental commitment. These findings suggest that companies should improve their corporate environmental ethics and sustainable HRM to encourage employees to enhance their own environmental commitment and, in turn, increase their green incremental and radical creativity levels. Our study has significant implications for enhancing business innovation and achieving sustainable development. Finally, we also address the theoretical and practical implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific evaluation of the sustainable development efficiency of China's large and medium‐sized cities has far‐reaching significance to how to improve the well‐being of residents and improve the level of sustainable development. This research uses the parallel two‐stage SBM dynamic (PT‐DSBM) model to evaluate the sustainable development efficiency of 33 cities in eastern, central, and western China. The innovation of this article is divided into two points. First of all, the PT‐DSBM model is used to subdivide the sustainable development system into social, economic, and ecological subsystems and closely integrates it with residents' QOL, which further reveals the inherent mechanism of the sustainable development system. Second, the spatiotemporal evolution can further reveal the spatiotemporal changes of sustainable development and residents' QOL within the scope of this investigation. The results show the following. (1) The overall efficiency of urban sustainable development in China is high in the east and west and low in the central. (2) The social subsystem efficiency in western cities exhibits outstanding performance, eastern cities perform better in economic and ecological sustainable subsystems, while the efficiency of residents' QOL remains at a high level in the sample cities as a whole. (3) In the study of spatiotemporal evolution, the concentration of urban sustainable development decreases with time evolution. Finally, this research gives suggestions on social security, stakeholder engagement, and environmental policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern‐day firms are under extreme pressure from diverse stakeholders to integrate environmentalism, mainly sustainable, social, and environmental ingenuities like biodiversity initiatives, into their business strategy. Collaborative arrangements in the form of business groups can positively influence sustainable development and environmental ingenuities by adhering to environmental policies and regulations and pursuing environmental orientation as they have a higher political or social visibility. However, such collaborations may negatively influence ecological and carbon footprints as their stronger political legitimacy means that they are less worried about undertaking legitimation activities in the drive toward environmental protection and restoration, such as enhanced sustainable social and environmental performance. This paper adds to the emerging conflicting business strategy and environment literature to resolve whether corporate's collaborative actions protect the environment or further deteriorate it in the form of increased or decreased sustainable social and environmental performance. Using a large sample of 21,086 firm‐year observations from 2010 to 2018 in China (the world's biggest polluter), we find a negative and significant relationship between corporate's collaborative actions and sustainable social and environmental performance, implying that such collaborative arrangements have worse sustainable social and environmental performance than non‐collaborative (individual) firms. The findings highlight vital guidelines in framing stratagems about ecological protection and restoration and effectively improving the environmental footprints of the firms. Our results constitute the interests of policymakers and controllers concerned with evaluating initiatives pertaining to ecological protection and sustainable development among the collaboratively managed enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to investigate the possibility of achieving Chinese climate and sustainable development goals (SDGs) with technological innovations and renewable energy policies. Currently, China is ranked first in global emissions. Hence, we utilized Chinese data of 1996Q1 2018Q4 to investigate the policy implication of technological innovation and renewal energy towards its climate goals. Economic development, technology, energy and environmental policies are incorporated in our study for clear insight on the impact of technology and renewable energy on China's climate goals. We adopt different scientific approaches (structural break, bound method of co‐integration, autoregressive dynamic lag‐ARDL dynamics and granger causality test) for both quantitative and theoretical analyses. Our discussions and policy inference are based on the findings from ARDL and granger causality analyses. Findings from ARDL tests debunk the inverted U‐shape EKC hypothesis for China. Technological innovations and renewable energies are found impacting favorably on Chinese environment by reducing carbon emissions. Output derived from Causality supports the results from ARDL with nexus established amongst the selected instruments. From the findings, we conclude by advocating for policy to be framed on renewable energy sector through investment and technological boosting towards a SDG for China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of China's economy has also led to serious environmental problems, which have seriously restricted China's sustainable development. To this end, the Chinese government has continued to explore environmental governance. So, can environmental governance policies promote industrial green transformation, so as to achieve the goal of sustainable development? Will environmental policy competition among local governments have an impact on them? These issues are the focus of this article. Based on the provincial panel data of China from 2006 to 2021, this article empirically analyzes the relationship between environmental governance, local government competition, and industrial green transformation. The results found that there was a "U" type nonlinear relationship between environmental governance and industrial green transformation. On the whole, most regions of China are still in the development stage where environmental governance is not conducive to industrial green transformation. There is competition for environmental governance policies among local governments in China, and the characteristics of "race to the bottom" are more significant. In the East developed areas, there is a more significant "yardstick competition" game state. In the Midwest undeveloped areas, it is manifested as competition for resources by deregulation of the environment, thereby promoting short‐term economic growth. In addition, local protection behaviors negatively regulate the impact of environmental governance on industrial green transformation, that is, inhibiting local industrial green transformation by causing labor market mismatch. This study can provide valuable insights for policymakers aiming to adopt measures to achieve the sustainable development of the economy and environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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With serious environmental, cost, and social concerns arising from emerging countries' rapid growth in agricultural food cold chain (AFCC), AFCC firms urgently require a set of comprehensive sustainable strategic solutions. Therefore, this research identified and modeled the critical success factors (CSFs) that support the sustainable development of AFCCs. The study integrated institutional theory, stakeholder theory, and the triple bottom line model; it also surveyed cold chain experts from 16 different organizations in China and applied the adversarial interpretation structure model (AISM). This comprehensive analysis indicates that managing stakeholder pressure is the most motivating CSF of all strategies. This strategy eventually contributes to the sustainability of AFCC in China by driving other CSFs. Additionally, the study determined the degree of interdependence and dominance of different strategies. Thus, this study establishes a theoretical foundation for the sustainable improvement of AFCC organizations' business strategies and environmental policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is gradually changing its pursuit of rapid economic growth into a pursuit of economic development quality. In this context, whether "cyberpower" and "digital China" strategies are truly conducive to China's sustainable development still needs to be further tested. This paper constructs China's provincial information and communication technology (ICT) comprehensive development level index from the four dimensions of penetration, coverage, information resources, and business and then innovatively undertakes a theoretical framework integrating ICT, environmental regulations, and green total factor energy efficiency (GTFEE) for the analysis. Using panel data from China's 30 provincial administrative regions from 2006 to 2017, this study explores the direct impact, moderating effect, nonlinear relationship, and regional differences of ICT development on GTFEE. It is indicated that ICT development plays a positive role in promoting GTFEE and that this role is moderated by environmental regulations. The regression results of the dynamic threshold model indicate that diverse environmental regulation intensities lead to different influences of ICT development on GTFEE. Moreover, the impact of ICT development on GTFEE is heterogeneous among different regions. Specifically, the western region may gain more benefits from ICT development by virtue of the late‐mover advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, is rapidly subsuming much of China's political and economic involvement abroad. As a far‐reaching infrastructure development and investment strategy, officially involving more than 130 countries, the expansion of the BRI raises important questions about its environmental impacts and its implications for environmental governance. This article examines how China is actively and rapidly developing an institutional architecture for its envisioned "green BRI," considering the key actors, policies, and initiatives involved in the environmental governance of the BRI. We find that the current institutional architecture of the "green BRI" relies on voluntary corporate self‐governance and a multitude of international and transnational sustainability initiatives. The effectiveness of the environmental governance of the BRI not only hinges on China's priorities and commitments, but also on the political willingness and capacity of BRI partner countries to maintain, implement, and enforce stringent environmental laws and regulations. We conclude by outlining several environmental governance challenges and an agenda for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we respectively decompose and study different effects of technological progress on carbon emissions in China based on the combination of the logarithmic mean Divisia index method, the Solow residual model, and spatial econometrics. Furthermore, we propose an improved approach to estimate the rebound effect index. By comparing the different effects of technological progress on carbon emissions, our results indicate that China's overall domestic technological progress reduced its carbon emissions over this period. As for the rebound effect index, the estimated results are higher than in previous studies because of the spatial rebound effect, which was ignored by previous studies. Regionally, although the eastern region had high rebound effects, the western region is at the greatest risk from the rebound effects. Finally, we present specific environmental policy proposals for China's sustainable development based on empirical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the rebound effect caused by technological progress has been widely accepted, few studies have estimated and compared the rebound effects of fossil and nonfossil energy separately, because fossil and nonfossil energy consumption have different effects on sustainable development. We use the data envelopment analysis–Malmquist index, logarithmic mean Divisia index, and Jacobian matrix methods to estimate and compare the rebound effects of China's fossil and nonfossil energy during 2006–2014. Empirical results show that nonfossil energy had a higher rebound effect than fossil energy and that technological progress was helpful in decreasing the proportion of fossil energy consumption. Furthermore, we found that technological progress contributed to increases in the relative price of fossil energy, causing nonfossil energy to be more favored. Simultaneously, nonfossil energy produced a substitution effect on fossil energy over the long term. On the basis of the empirical analysis, we also present some environmental policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green product innovation is critical to a firm's sustainability. Some studies have explored how to enhance a firm's green production innovation. In this research, we construct and test a research model for exploring the influence of environmental innovation practices (EIP) on green innovation performance, and we investigate the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Based on organizational creativity theory, we propose and test the hypothesis that EIP can affect creativity climate and green creativity, which in turn enhance green product innovation performance. Using survey data from 147 companies in China, we find that EIP directly and positively affect green creativity and indirectly influence green product innovation performance via green creativity. Thus, green creativity partially mediates the link between EIP and green product innovation performance. Our finding also indicates that creativity climate positively affect green creativity. Green product innovation performance is positively affected by creativity climate but not directly affected by EIP. The results further demonstrate that creativity climate fully mediates the link between EIP and green product innovation performance. Our findings suggest that firm' managers should shape the organizational creativity climate and encourage green creativity to enhance their firm's sustainability. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications, which can promote the firm's sustainability through environmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental problems in China have attracted global attention. Grafting returnee executives' green resources to Chinese manufacturing enterprises is an effective way to solve China's sustainable development problems. This paper focuses on the impact of returnee executives and the heterogeneity of returnee and local executives on green innovation performance and the moderating effects of environmental regulation and managerial ties. The paper builds on data from 276 Chinese manufacturing enterprises. The results show that returnee executives tend to achieve sustainable development through green innovation. However, not all kinds of heterogeneity between returnee and local executives can promote green innovation performance. In addition, environmental regulation and managerial ties, as two important external moderation variables, have different impacts and different extents of impact on the relationship between returnee executives and four aspects (R&D, manufacturing, marketing, and management) of green innovation performance, that is, environmental regulation positively moderates the relationship between returnee executives and green manufacturing and management innovation performance but negatively moderates the relationship between returnee executives and green R&D and marketing innovation performance. These findings have clear management implications for Chinese manufacturing enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study mainly examined the influences of enterprises' carbon reduction behaviors on their sustainable development, and investigated the effects on sustainable development of carbon emission reduction by state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) from high‐carbon‐emission industries in China. Data were coded through a content analysis procedure, followed by regression analysis. Analysis of variance results revealed that SOEs and high‐carbon‐emission industries emphasize realizing carbon reduction more than do privately owned enterprises and non‐high‐carbon‐emission industries, with significant between‐groups differences observed between these enterprises and industries. Regression results indicated that carbon reduction positively and significantly influences corporate sustainable development, suggesting that carbon reduction is beneficial to both the ecological environment and corporate sustainable development. However, carbon reduction negatively yet insignificantly influences the sustainable development of SOEs in industries with high carbon emissions. The empirical findings may serve as a critical reference for China, which is moving toward a low‐carbon economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer choice behavior is crucial to supporting cleaner production and plays an essential role in low-carbon development and environmental policy-making. Therefore, combining system dynamics with an agent-based model (SD-AB), the present study explores influencing factors on both providers' and consumers' sides. Using empirical data from selected firms and a questionnaire survey of residents in China, the simulation results revealed that consumers' low-carbon awareness and income have little effect on their willingness to pay for low-carbon products. In contrast, some factors have an obvious effect on consumers' willingness to pay for low-carbon products, including the delivery speed of low-carbon products, consumers' patience and degree of satisfaction. Thus, companies that provide low-carbon products should be more focused on customer expectations and should ensure timely and efficient delivery to consumers. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the resource dependence theory, the stakeholder perspective and environmental management capabilities, this study examined the relationship between the heterogeneity of customer pressures and the varying levels of environmental policies in China. Data on 1215 Chinese manufacturing firms were analyzed to demonstrate that environmental pressures emanating from different types of customer have different impacts on firm environmental conduct and that the pressures from multinational consumers have a stronger effect on local Chinese suppliers' propensity to reduce product environmental risks than those from local consumers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]