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With China's commitment to achieving a carbon peak and carbon neutralisation by 2030 and 2060, respectively, the government's requirements for enterprises to adopt green technology are becoming increasingly urgent. We established a tripartite evolutionary game model of an enterprise, government and bank. We analysed conditions for the existence of stable points and factors affecting the choice of stakeholder's strategy. The influence of the change in each parameter on the evolutionary stable strategy was further studied. We found that the government's reward, subsidy and taxes for enterprise's green technology innovation can increase the willingness of enterprises to implement green technology innovation, and the role of taxes is greater than that of subsidies. The preferential interest rate for green innovation is conducive to stimulating enterprises to engage in green innovation, but the increase in the cost of green credit will reduce the willingness of banks to provide green credit. With the increase in the subsidy, incentives and the cost of environmental regulation, the policy burden of the government will gradually increase, thus reducing the willingness of the government to implement environmental regulation policy. The research presented in this paper furthers work on the theoretical modelling of green credit and environmental regulation policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry is supported by smart and green manufacturing, which have great potential to empower the nation's green development. This study examines the impact of the Made in China 2025 industrial policy on urban green economic growth. This study applies the super-slacks-based measure model to measure cities' green economic growth, using the double machine learning model, which overcomes the limitations of the linear setting of traditional causal inference models and maintains estimation accuracy under high-dimensional control variables, to conduct an empirical analysis based on panel data of 281 Chinese cities from 2006 to 2021. The results reveal that the Made in China 2025 strategy significantly drives urban green economic growth, and this finding holds after a series of robustness tests. A mechanism analysis indicates that the Made in China 2025 strategy promotes green economic growth through green technology progress, optimizing energy consumption structure, upgrading industrial structure, and strengthening environmental supervision. In addition, the policy has a stronger driving effect for cities with high manufacturing concentration, industrial intelligence, and digital finance development. This study provides valuable theoretical insights and policy implications for government planning to promote high-quality development through industrial policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of unprecedented ecological crises, a consensus has been consolidated in the global community to fundamentally alter current modes of economic growth and patterns of resource allocation, in pursuit of a low‐carbon transition. Environmental governance plays an important instrumental role in this global agenda. The policy mix framework has emerged as a holistic approach to the design and analysis of environmental policies. A policy mix encompasses different dimensions, featuring not only the horizontality but also the verticality and temporality of interactions. Nevertheless, existing literature on environmental policy mixes focuses on the horizontal interactions, and very few studies have systematically explored the vertical and temporal interactions of policy mixes. Drawing upon the case of agricultural residue recycling in China, this study captures the evolution of both the narrative temporality and the verticality of environmental policy mixes. More importantly, the changing political narratives around residue recycling exert an intangible but significant influence on the vertical interactions between multilevel governments in both policy making and policy implementation, in which institutional and organizational arrangements constitute a key operational and mediating mechanism to manage vertical coordination. The study finally proposes three avenues for future research on environmental policy mixes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation of public management performance is the key to identify the effectiveness of the work of public administration, and public policy is an important guarantee for the orderly promotion of the work of public administration; therefore, it is important to analyze the effectiveness of public management policies to evaluate public management performance. Taking environmental protection policies as an example, this paper constructs an environmental-economic DEA efficiency analysis model using the DEA method to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of EEE in different provinces of China. It is found that EEE is highly correlated with the regional economic development level and is highly influenced by policy fluctuations, but the overall EEE of different provinces from 2016 to 2020 tends to be consistent and has a certain degree of stability. The conclusions of this paper have important implications for policy guidance, emphasizing the need to focus on the coordination of economic development and environmental protection, and the need for the improvement of the environmental policy system to be continuously optimized in an incremental manner, taking into account the actual situation of local development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we assess the sustainability of the electricity sector and explore the correlation between government environmental policies and the sector's sustainability. We find that at the national level, the sustainability of the electricity sector has exhibited a notable upward trend in recent years. However, this trend has not been evenly distributed across different regions of the country. Second, government environmental policies have a significant positive impact on promoting the sustainability of the electricity sector. Third, the impact of government environmental policies on the sustainability of the electricity sector is more pronounced in the western region of China. • We explore the impact of government environmental policy on the sustainability of China's electricity sector. • Government environmental policies can significantly promote the sustainability of China's electricity sector. • Technological progress is an effective channel between government environmental policies and the sustainability of the electricity sector. • The sustainability of the electricity sector is most significantly impacted by the environmental policies of the government in western China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Volatile organic compounds (VOC) contributing to smog formation, have been an important indicator of atmospheric governance during China's "14th Five-Year Plan". VOC would be possibly incorporated into the scope of environmental protection tax, but previous studies have seldom explored impacts of VOC control policies at national and regional levels. Here, we design a national uniform VOC control policy, as well as two regionally differentiated policies based on regional disparities in PM 2.5 concentrations and energy intensity by using a cross-scale dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. Our analysis is to assess the impacts of these policies on VOC, CO 2 , sulfur dioxide (SO 2), nitrogen oxides (NO X), and PM 2.5 emissions, air quality and environmental equity, and to estimate health benefits, policy costs and net benefits. We find that national and regionally differentiated VOC control policies generally lead to VOC emission reductions and generate co-benefits on emission reductions in CO 2 , SO 2 , NO X and PM 2.5 at national and provincial levels. However, regional emission leakage exists due to differences in the provincial costs of VOC mitigation. The regionally differentiated VOC pricing policies are found to be more effective to enhance environmental equity than the uniform policy. In particular, the regionally differentiated VOC control policy based on provincial energy efficiency is found to be superior to other policies in terms of improve air quality. Furthermore, the human health benefits associated with VOC pricing policies would partially offset policy costs at both the national and regional levels. Our results suggest that policymakers would pay attention to developing regions with low energy efficiency which have the great emission reduction potential. Advanced producing technology and further end-of-pipe control measures to reduce non-combustion PM 2.5 emissions are needed. VOC policy designed based on provincial energy efficiency provides great insights for environmental policy making to accomplish 2035 goal of building a Beautiful China. • National and regionally differentiated VOC tax policies are designed. • VOC tax generates climate co-benefits. • Regional emission leakage exists associated with regionally differentiated policies. • Regionally differentiated VOC tax are effective to enhance environmental equity. • Human health benefits associated with VOC tax partially offset policy costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The promotion of modern industrialization has caused heavy environmental pollution. Environmental protection is a basic national policy of China. In 2011, China began to implement the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan for National Environmental Protection" (12th FYP_NEP). Using the survey data of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Shandong Province of China, this paper empirically explores the impact of 12th FYP_NEP on the energy utilization and operating efficiencies of SMEs. It is found that the environmental policy "12th FYP_NEP" has a significant incentive effect on both efficiency performance of Chinese SMEs, and has a greater positive impact on operating efficiency. Our heterogeneity analysis showed the following results. The incentive effect is different in different industries and enterprises of different sizes. The policy "12th FYP_NEP" has a greater positive impact on the energy utilization efficiency of SMEs in China's first and second tier cities, but it has no significant impact on their operation efficiency. This shows that SMEs in first and second tier cities are more effective in coping with the national environmental policy reform strategy. It can be seen that the promulgation of China's environmental policies can significantly improve the energy utilization awareness of these SMEs. The incentive effect of the policy on the two efficiency performances of SMEs in cities with "heavy air pollution" is greater, indicating that the implementation effect of "12th FYP_NEP" on SMEs in such cities is better. The enlightenments are as follows: the current situation of Chinese SMEs is that the energy utilization efficiency is low, while the operating efficiency is high. Most enterprises attach great importance to their own operating profits and economic development, and the awareness of energy utilization needs to be greatly strengthened. "12th FYP_NEP" has obvious positive effect on the energy utilization and operating efficiencies of SMEs, but there are slight differences among different types of enterprises. It is suggested that governments can refine their own environmental regulation standards and implement different environmental regulations for different types of enterprises, so as to enhance the performance of domestic enterprises most effectively. • This paper used the China survey data on SMEs over the period 2010–2013. • It is found that the Chinese "12th FYP_NEP" has a significant incentive effect on efficiency performance of Chinese SMEs. • The incentive effect is different in different industries and enterprises of different sizes. • The policy makes for improving the energy efficiency of SMEs in first and second-tier cities and heavy-polluted cities. • Chinese SMEs should attach great importance to energy utilization rather than operating profits only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic model is used to construct political factors. • SBM-DEA model is used to evaluate the ecological efficiency of 36 cities. • Time effect is introduced into FSQCA to analyze the panel data of all cities and four regions. • Differences of the four urban agglomerations are compared. • Analyze the different paths of political factors in 36 cities. Rapid economic development of any country will usually lead to negative environmental impacts. A free market economy cannot fundamentally solve this issue, which requires the guidance and control of the government. The environmental policies of governments can effectively improve the ecological conditions in a region. This study quantifies environmental regulation policies and takes four urban agglomerations in eastern China as the research object to explore the influence of environmental regulation on regional ecological efficiency. First, policies can be divided into policy control, pollution control, ecological protection, and social adjustment by building a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model of a policy text library to measure differences in urban policy bias. Next, a slack-based measure (SBM) model was used to measure urban ecological efficiency. Finally, using the qualitative comparison analysis method, the time effect was considered and the ecological efficiency configuration of the entire region was obtained. In addition, contrast analysis was conducted for different path configurations and the reasons of the statuses of the four urban agglomerations were obtained. The results show that policy control, pollution control, ecological protection, and other mandatory policies can significantly reduce the negative environmental effects, especially when the policy controls involve an explicit form of punishment, which is a necessary condition for achieving a high level of ecological efficiency. However, social adjustment means having higher requirements for regional total factor development, which requires improving the environmental awareness of residents and improving corporate social responsibility. Regional differences will mean that areas with a lower level of economic development have a higher intensity of policy control, and the means of policy control should be matched with the level of economic development. In addition, this study proposes some policy suggestions, such as strengthening policy control and pollution prevention, strengthening social regulation, and promulgating environmental laws and regulations according to local conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]