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Accompanying China's accession to the World Trade Organization, the rapid development of the Chinese economy has led to increasingly serious environmental issues. However, the inherent mechanisms underlying the impact of Environmental Information Disclosure (EID) policy and trade on the environmental effects of Chinese paper enterprises remain unclear in the context of the era's requirement for a resource-conserving and environmentally-friendly society. The pollution problem in the papermaking industry has received attention worldwide, and how to balance the environmental and development issues of papermaking enterprises is an urgent issue that needs to be solved in the academic community. This study explores the impact mechanisms of EID policy and trade on the environmental effects of enterprises from the perspective of financial constraints. Utilizing the PSM-DID model, the study investigates the moderating effects of financial constraints on the EID policy and import-export trade. The findings reveal that both external and internal financial constraints have negative, detrimental effects on the environmental effects of the EID policy and trade. These constraints impede research and development investment and technological upgrades, hinder productivity improvement, and hamper the realization of "regulatory and trade innovation effects". This study enriches our understanding of the mechanisms by which trade affects the environmental effects of Chinese paper enterprises and further identifies the impacts of Chinese EID policy and trade on pollution emissions by enterprises, providing a theoretical basis and practical foundation for the government in formulating financial, environmental, and trade policies., 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.)

Environmental pollution control and greenhouse gas emissions reduction have become the main ecological protection issues. The digital transformation of the financial sector provides a vital opportunity to holistically promote environmental governance. This article incorporates the synergistic reduction of pollution and carbon emissions into the environmental governance system of digital financial development. Using panel data from 280 cities in China between 2011 and 2018, we examine the impact of digital financial development on the synergistic reduction of pollution and carbon emissions. We find that (1) digital finance development can significantly improve the synergistic reduction of pollution and carbon emissions, effectively lowering carbon emissions while reducing pollution. External environmental concerns can further unleash the potential for digital finance development to enhance its synergistic reduction of pollution and carbon emissions. (2) The key transmission mechanism lies in the dual guidance of digital finance development toward biased technical change, i.e., toward energy-saving elements on the input side and toward reduced pollution output on the output side, thereby inducing the synergistic reduction of pollution and carbon emissions. (3) The synergistic effect of digital finance development on pollution and carbon reduction depends on the necessary regional development endowment, such as strong green technology innovation capabilities, lower traditional financial accessibility, and carbon sink reserves. This study expands the understanding of the environmental effects of digital finance development and offers crucial insights for exploring the optimal development path under green strategies., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Existing studies on environmental policy implementation in China have largely been focused on the inadequacy of environmental policy implementation at local levels and the adversarial campaign‐style enforcement used to remedy it, while overlooked other approaches to addressing environmental issues. We present a case in which a consensual approach was used to control water pollution and identify key factors contributing to the adoption and success of such an approach. The research unit is the process of water pollution control in Shandong Province from 2002 to 2011. During the case period, the pulp and paper industry (the leading polluting source) was regulated with gradually tightened water pollution discharge standards which were made and implemented in a consensual way, surface water quality was greatly improved, and the economic output of the regulated industry grew rapidly. Key factors contributing to the adoption and success of such an approach include the presence of a capable policy entrepreneur who played an important role in policy innovation, forging consensus building in policy making and facilitating consensual policy implementation; the deep and wide involvement of the regulated firms in the policy making process which allowed them to share know‐how and express preferences; and the strong political support from provincial higher‐ups which signaled strong political wills. The findings enrich our understanding of environmental policy enforcement in China by adding a set of internal factors to a literature pool focusing more on the the influence of such external factors as institutional incentiveson policy processes and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life expectancy can reflect both health benefit and implementation cost of climate policy. Nevertheless, little research has quantified the relation between life expectancy and climate policy in literature. In this paper, we attempt to narrow the research gap by studying how life expectancy is related to the Chinese nationwide emission trading scheme (CNETS). To achieve this research target, a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model is employed to simulate the operation of the economic system and the policy shock from emission abatement. The CGE model results show that life expectancy is prolonged by GDP but shortened by emissions, and the GDP impact on life expectancy is larger than the emission impact. Climate policy has dual effects on life expectancy because it relieves both negative emission impacts and positive GDP impacts on lifespan; its net effect on life expectancy is positive. Life expectancy positively impacts GDP, and this impact is moderated by climate policy; specifically, climate policy reinforces the positive impact of life expectancy on GDP. Life expectancy minimally affects carbon emissions during climate policy implementation; in other words, it has minimal impacts on emission abatement. These findings imply that climate policy and life expectancy complement each other; the government could implement climate policy to increase lifespan or prolong life expectancy to facilitate policy implementation., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The digital economy is playing a crucial effect in the field of environmental governance. Digital and intelligent management is an essential means to fully realize the "zero-waste city" construction. The present paper investigates the impact of digital economy on China's provincial "zero-waste city" construction. The results indicate that digital economy can contribute to "zero-waste city" construction. The digital economy has a positive nonlinear effect on the construction of "zero-waste city," but the marginal effect is diminishing. The digital economy can facilitate "zero-waste city" construction by improving industrial structure upgrading and green technology innovation. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that digital economy contributes to the construction of "zero-waste city" in the eastern and western regions and high-level environmental regulation regions, while this impact is insignificant in the central region and low-level environmental regulation regions. The digital economy exerts the most significant positive influence on waste resource recycling followed by waste final disposal and then waste reduction at the source. These findings underscore the effect of digital economy in fostering "zero-waste city" construction and promoting sustainable waste management. The present study provides new ideas for the "zero-waste city" construction in emerging developing countries such as China., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

As an important policy instrument to achieve greenhouse gas emission reduction, carbon emissions trading has also promoted the green transformation of enterprises while achieving carbon reduction targets. This study uses the implementation of the Chinese carbon emissions trading pilot policy (CETPP) as a quasi-natural experiment and analyzes the impacts of the CETPP on the green transformation of enterprises with the difference-in-differences (DID) method based on a sample of 297 listed Chinese A-share high-energy-consuming enterprises. The result findings show that CETPP can significantly promote the green transformation of enterprises. The heterogeneity analysis also reveals that CETPP has differential effects on enterprises belonging to different industries, which is caused by the fact that enterprises in different industries differ significantly in their green transformation paths and modes. Moreover, CETPP has a significant facilitating effect on the green transformation of non-state-owned enterprises compared to state-owned enterprises. Finally, marketization and enterprise social responsibility are two major mechanisms for the CETPP to promote the green transformation of enterprises. Our findings reveal that policymakers should further deepen the dynamic management of carbon emission allowances and guide enterprises to actively undertake social responsibility, thus leveraging the market regulation mechanism to promote the green transformation of enterprises., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Literatures focus on whether formal environmental regulatory policies can effectively stimulate green total factor productivity (GTFP), but generally ignore the role of informal institutions such as public environmental appeals. This paper uses inter-provincial panel data and Non-Radial Slacks-Based Measure (SBM) model to measure GTFP. With the Baidu Environmental Search Index presenting the public environmental appeals, the dynamic panel System Generalized Method of Moments (SYS-GMM) and Differenced Generalized Method of Moments (DIFF-GMM) methods are used to explore the effect, transmission mechanism and conditions of the public's environmental demands on green total factor productivity. The study concludes that public environmental appeals are beneficial to improve GTFP, and this result still holds after endogenous and robustness tests. The mechanism results show that the green technology innovation effect is an important mechanism for public environmental appeals to improve GTFP. In addition, public environmental appeals of different pollutants and different locations have heterogeneous effects on GTFP. In addition, the public wealth level, human capital level, and government institutional environment play an important role in the impact of public environmental appeals on GTFP., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This study aims to examine the effect of carbon dioxide emission and air pollution on agricultural productivity while accounting for the effect of renewable energy use, ICT, technological innovation, environmental policy stringency, and democracy for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) during the period 1990-2019. Several econometric procedures including mean group estimates are employed. The result suggests that both carbon dioxide emission and air pollution negatively affect the productivity of the agricultural sector. The effects of renewable energy, ICT, technological innovation, and democracy are found to be increasing agricultural productivity. Environmental policy stringency coefficient confirms the porter hypothesis. The result from the causality test suggests that bidirectional causality exists between CO 2 , PM 2.5 , renewable energy, technological innovation, ICT, and agricultural productivity. Finally, the study provides several policy suggestions for the governments of the BRICS economies in order to increase agricultural productivity while tackling the environmental vulnerability., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Based on the panel data of 278 prefecture-level cities in China from 2005 to 2017, this study takes the environmental information disclosure policy implemented in 2008 as a quasi-natural experiment and uses the difference-in-difference method to examine the impact of public environmental supervision on industrial structure upgrading. This study found that public environmental supervision has indeed significantly promoted the industrial structure optimization. It is noteworthy that, the impact of public environmental supervision on industrial structure optimization is heterogeneous across regions and corresponding to the intensity of environmental regulations. Public environmental supervision in the eastern region has significantly promoted the optimization of the industrial structure, while the promotion effect in the central and western regions is not obvious. Besides, the effect of public environmental supervision is more significant in the cities with relatively tight traditional environmental regulations. The mechanism analysis shows that public environmental supervision promotes industrial structure upgrading mainly by influencing the level of urban technological innovation, and the level of technological innovation plays an intermediary role between public environmental supervision and industrial structure optimization. This study has important reference significance for further improving the environmental information disclosure system and constructing an environmental governance system with the government as the leading body, enterprises as the main body, and the public as the common participation., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Environmental regulation and innovative development are essential means to solve the negative externalities of environmental pollution. However, developing countries often face the dual pressures of environmental pollution and innovative development. This paper focuses on whether environmental protection policies (EPP) can achieve a win-win situation between green development and innovative development. Based on the panel data of 277 cities in China from 2006 to 2016, this paper studies the impact of China's EPP on urban innovation efficiency by using a time-varying difference-in-differences approach. Combined with the geographical features of Chinese cities, we further take urban form into the mediating effect analysis. The results show that (1) EPP has a significant positive impact on innovation efficiency, and the result satisfies the parallel trend test; (2) the robustness test shows that EPP has technological innovation and diffusion effects; and (3) the mediating effect test show that urban form has a significant mediating effect on the impact of EPP on innovation efficiency. Therefore, environmental policies should be formulated considering the differences of urban form to achieve the optimal implementation effect., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This paper attempts to investigate how the rapid development of China's environmental policy contributes to the changes in China's labour market. We first categorise the environmental regulations into (i) command-and-control policies, (ii) economic incentive policies, and (iii) voluntary environmental agreements (VEAs). Then, we use the provincial panel data over the 2000-2015 period to estimate the effect of alternative environmental regulations on employment in China. The results show that alternative environmental regulations have different impacts on employment. This difference even exists within the same group of environmental policies. Amongst the command-and-control policies, the three simultaneities policy leads to less employment, while the deadline governance systems increase employment. For economic incentive policies, higher environmental tax leads to lower employment, while more funding for environmental research promotes employment. The results also show that more VEAs reduced labour demand. In addition, the dynamic impact and regional heterogeneity of environmental regulations on employment are confirmed by the empirical estimation. Specifically, the economic incentive policies significantly impact employment in Central and Western China, whereas they have a non-significant impact on employment in Eastern China. This finding confirms that economic development impacts the relationship between environmental regulations and employment., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The promulgation and execution of green credit (GC) policies have had a significant influence on the development of the economy and society, and their impact on low-carbon development (LCD) needs to be taken seriously. On the basis of elaborating the mechanism of the role of GC on LCD, this study constructs a panel fixed effects (FE) model to test the direct impact of GC on LCD by using Chinese provincial-level data from 2007 to 2020. An intermediary effect model is constructed to investigate its indirect effects. A dynamic SDM is further constructed to examine the spatial effects of GC on LCD in neighbouring regions. The results show that GC is helping China to achieve LCD. GC can promote LCD through promoting green innovation, optimizing energy structure and upgrading industrial structure. It is crucial to acknowledge that all three pathways are essential channels of influence and should not be disregarded. GC not only fosters LCD in the local areas, but also has a positive spatial spillover effect in adjacent regions. Based on the above conclusions, this study proposes policy recommendations such as increasing support for GC, smoothing the transmission channel from GC to LCD, and establishing a synergistic linkage mechanism between interregional credit and environmental governance. This study provides valuable insights for China to realize LCD, as well as for other countries to actively engage in energy conservation and emission reduction efforts., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This paper examines the effects of the green credit policy on forming three types of "zombie firms," namely, credit-subsidized zombie firms, poorly managed zombie firms, and comprehensive zombie firms, considering the quasi-natural experiment of the implementation of the "Green Credit Guidelines" in 2004. In this paper, I implement a difference-in-differences method and use the data of all Chinese A-share non-financial listed companies from 2008 to 2017. The results show that the green credit policy attempts to inhibit the formation of credit-subsidized zombie firms by reducing bank loan subsidies and evergreen lending. However, the green credit policy promotes poorly managed zombie firms by strengthening firms' financial constraints and reducing the working capital and investment efficiency. The green credit policy has not shown a significant impact on comprehensive zombie firms. Moreover, the green credit policy has shown a more significant impact on state-owned firms, firms in industries that heavily rely on external financing and are highly competitive, and firms involved in high financial marketization areas., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The environmental stressors associated with the cross-provincial transfer of coal resource-based enterprises (CREs) have become a critical concern for the green, sustainable, and high-quality development of resource-rich areas in central and western regions. This study referred to socioeconomic statistics and carried out an interview survey, literature review, and systematic analysis to clarify the mechanism underlying environmental stressors arising from the cross-provincial transfer of CREs. The intervention factors associated with such environmental stressors were identified, and the study conducted an empirical analysis of relevant data related to the coal-resources industry in three central and western provinces in China for the period 1997-2016. Research findings: (1) The intensity ranking of the influencing factors associated with environmental stressors caused by cross-provincial transfers of CREs has certain rules. The 'level of the enterprise's investment in environmental protection' is the weakest, the 'enterprise's development mode level' is slightly stronger, the 'enterprise scale' is stronger, and 'environmental regulation' is the strongest. (2) Stricter endogenous and exogenous policy regulations for environmental governance in rich coal resource-based regions are associated with weaker negative externalities in respect of resource development and the intensity of stressors. (3) Larger CREs are associated with a better green mining capacity, environmental repair cost advantages, social constraints, self-discipline, and thus, a weaker stress effect. (4) CREs that adopt more superior modes of development that focus on the utilization of the 'three wastes' are associated with a weaker stress effect. (5) The higher the level of investment by CREs in environmental protection technology, facilities, and equipment, the weaker the stress effect. The conclusions of the study can provide a theoretical basis to assist the Chinese government to develop relevant regulations to control inter-provincial transfers by CREs and to thereby diminish environmental stressor effects., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.)

This study aims to investigate the impact of environmental technological innovations and environmental policy stringency on green economic growth in China. The empirical analysis of the study is based on the ARDL model. Findings confirm that environmental technology positively impacts green economic growth in the short and long run. In the robust model, the estimates of all technologies appeared to be significantly positive in the short and long run. Conversely, the estimated coefficients of environmental policy stringency, in the basic and robust model, have only negatively impacted the green economic growth in China in the short run. In the long run, the environmental policy stringency has not shown any significant impact on green economic growth in China in the basic and robust model. China needs to increase environmental technology and environmental policy stringency for achieving green growth and sustainability targets., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Strict environmental regulations may change the behavioral decisions of firms. Based on the exogenous impact of the Chinese Central Government's inclusion of environmental performance in the assessment targets of municipal officials in 2007, this study uses the difference-in-difference method to explore the impact of environmental regulations on employee income. We find that (1) environmental regulations will significantly reduce the average wage level of employees in polluting industries and have no significant impact in nonpolluting industries. (2) This effect is more pronounced in eastern China, where environmental regulations are more stringent, and in areas where political promotion incentives are stronger. (3) Mechanistic analysis finds that environmental regulations will affect employee income by increasing costs and constraining financing. (4) More importantly, we find that the decline in the average wage level of firms is mainly due to the decline in the average wage level of ordinary employees, and the average wage level of management has not decreased significantly, which means that environmental regulations have expanded the functional income distribution. Our findings contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the effectiveness of environmental regulatory policy implementation and associated economic cost issues., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Under the pressure of environmental crisis caused by production and economic development, a policy for Leading Officials' Accountability Audit of Natural Resources (LOAANR) was issued in 2014 to reduce the environmental risks and gain high-quality economy. Taking LOAANR policy as the research object, and based on 2011 to 2018 panel data from Chinese heavy-polluting enterprises, this paper employed a two-way fixed difference-in-differences (DID) model to explore the relationship between the LOAANR, environmental costs (ECs) and green innovation (GI). It was found that the implementation of the LOAANR significantly promoted enterprise GI, with the regulating impact mechanism, EC. GI efficiency was measured by continuous DID method. A heterogeneity analysis revealed that non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs) were more eager to environmentally innovate. A corporate life cycle heterogeneity analysis of the GI policy effect found that the policy effect was negative in the decline stages. Compared with the eastern Chinese enterprises, enterprises in other regions were found to be more prone to positively adopting GI to maximize benefits in the face of the LOAANR. The policy was observed to have inhibited GI in central Chinese enterprises. It was also demonstrated that the policy effect has time and regional dynamic effect. Common trend, placebo, PSM-DID tests, and another robustness regressions were applied to support the conclusions. All the findings are expected to provide basic theoretical guidance for more environmental policies and high-quality production., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Campaign-style environmental implementation (CEI) is widely exerted in environmental protection, while its benefits and costs are controversial. We take advantage of the Central Environmental Protection Inspection (CEPI) System-a latest and distinguished form of CEI launched by China in 2016, as a quasi-natural experiment, to compare the benefits and costs of CEI based on water pollution effect estimates. Our results based on the annual panel data from 500 cities during 2009-2018 show that CEPI significantly reduced water pollution by an average of 20.7%. Further cost-benefit analysis based on the estimates of water pollution reduction shows that the potential health benefits of mortality and morbidity reduction resulting from CEPI are at least $12.26 billion, without bearing additional economic costs. We also explore why CEPI is cost-effective and find that CEPI reduces water pollution and becomes cost-effective mainly through deterring local officials, punishing polluting enterprises, and increasing public participation in environmental governance., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The study investigated "Building Ecological Civilization: the Importance of Promoting Green Investments by Chinese Companies" to examine the complex connections between the factors affecting Chinese businesses' ecological performance (EP). An autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is used in the study to analyze the impact of green investments (GI), the policy environment (PE), government support (GS), public awareness and perception (PAP), and technological capability (TC) on companies' earnings per share (EPS). The results show a strong correlation between GI and EP, indicating that businesses' growing use of green initiatives is essential for raising environmental sustainability. The study also shows that PE, TC, and EP have an inverse relationship, indicating the need for more supportive governmental policies and regulations and the effective adoption and implementation of green technologies. The interaction of GS and PAP significantly reduces the ecological impact of green investments, highlighting the significance of citizen involvement and the role of government in advancing ecological civilization. The findings also demonstrated that green investments, policy environments, public perception, and technology influence the ecological performance of businesses. They also demonstrate statistical robustness with low p-values. This information is essential for developing policies that support an ecological civilization, which is necessary for China and globally in light of the current climate crisis., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Using data from Chinese industrial firms from 2003 to 2012, this paper utilizes a difference-in-differences approach to investigate the impact of stringent command-and-control environmental regulations on firm productivity through Chongqing's daily penalty policy (DPP). Unlike the previous command-and-control environmental regulations of "low penalty amounts", "one-size-fits-all", and "one-off penalties", the DPP with "high deterrent effect" and "high cost of non-compliance" imposes continuous high fines of a fixed daily amount on persistent environmental violators. This is conducive to improving environmental quality while significantly increasing firms' total factor productivity (TFP). It provides empirical evidence for the validity of the strong Porter hypothesis in developing countries. A series of robustness tests ensure the credibility of these findings. The mechanism analysis shows that DPP can improve TFP of firms by stimulating the innovation compensation effect of firms and crowding out high polluting and inefficient firms in the industry. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the productivity of highly polluting, private, non-exporting and small-scale firms is significantly increased under the influence of DPP. This study provides new ideas for improving command-and-control environmental regulation to bring into play its Porter effect, and offers experiences and insights for regulating firms' emission behaviors to achieve a win-win situation for both economic growth and green development., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Taking industrial waste gas control as an example, this study explores the impact of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of local governments' environmental governance under the pressure of competition, and analyzes the role of competition among local governments and support for R&D activities. The results demonstrate that fiscal decentralization can significantly promote the efficiency of local governance on control of waste gas, and this positive effect is mainly realized through the support from local government for R&D activities. As for the influence of inter-governmental competitions, only the competition in terms of governance efficiency delivers a significant U-shaped impact, and competition in expenditure scale and economy area weakly inhibits the positive influence of decentralization, meaning that the evaluation system centered on economic growth and the imitation strategy of local expenditure will not lead to a great decline in the efficiency of the use of environmental governance. Overall, this study suggests that further fiscal decentralization, emphases on government support for R&D activities, and enhanced environmental assessment in official evaluation are all the important directions for boosting the efficiency of governance., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Environmental policies play an important role in the process of industrial low-carbon transition in developing countries. From the perspective of the impact condition and mechanisms, we discuss how to improve their effectiveness to give full play to the positive impact of environmental regulations. Based on provincial industrial data from 2003 to 2019 in China, this study uses a threshold regression model and endogenous regression to reveal the impact condition and mechanisms of environmental regulations on industrial low-carbon transition. The results suggest that (1) technological innovation capability and cost-bearing capacity are the key conditions for environmental regulations to exert a positive impact on low-carbon transition. (2) Environmental regulations have a positive impact on low-carbon transition through technological innovation (technology), resource reallocation (capital), and skill premium (labor). Research on the implementation conditions and mechanisms of environmental regulations will help policy-makers formulate appropriate and reasonable environmental regulations and eliminate the obstacles between environmental regulations and low-carbon transition, while an assessment of China's environmental policies will provide a reference for environmental governance in other developing countries., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The relationship between digital finance and regional green innovation has been partially confirmed, yet the role of environmental regulation in it remains unexplored. Therefore, this paper examines the impact of digital finance on regional green innovation and tests the moderating role of environmental regulation using Chinese city-level data from 2011 to 2019 as a research sample. The results show that digital finance can significantly promote regional green innovation by alleviating regional financing constraints and increasing regional R&D investment. Besides, digital finance has apparent regional difference effects (the contribution of digital finance to regional green innovation is greater in eastern China than in western China, and the development of digital finance in neighbouring regions has a negative transmission effect on local green innovation). Finally, environmental regulation positively moderates the relationship between digital finance and regional green innovation. This paper explores the relationship between digital finance and regional green innovation from the perspective of environmental regulation, providing empirical evidence to promote regional green innovation., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This study examines the impact of the Chinese regional emission trading system (ETS) pilots on enterprise transformation from the perspective of diversification. We use data on Chinese A-share listed companies from 2004 to 2021, and adopt the staggered difference-in-differences (DID) and difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) models. The empirical results show that first, the ETS significantly increases the product quantity and revenue diversification of regulated firms. Second, the ETS promotes enterprise diversification through three channels: emission cost, emission risk, and market efficiency. Third, the ETS has a greater impact on the diversification of state-owned enterprises, firms with high business concentration, and firms with low innovation investment. Fourth, the ETS-driven diversification has not been successful as it has increased firms' costs and reduced their profitability. We recommend introducing industrial policies to guide the transformation of enterprises, encourage them to improve their innovation capabilities, and choose appropriate transformation strategies., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The inefficient enforcement of environmental policies cannot address global environmental challenges. As a result, China's government has implemented the Central Environmental Protection Inspection (CEPI) to overcome the policy-implementation gap between higher and lower levels of government. The existing literature has examined the positive effects of CEPI on environmental pollution, but has not explained the mechanisms for its success. To examine these mechanisms, this article uses a series of regression analyses on an empirical data set of 282 prefecture-level cities from 2010 to 2018. The results identify the mechanism for the effective implementation of CEPI, from the perspective of the campaign-style governance of local officials at local levels. This study also shows the heterogeneity of the campaign-style governance behavior of local officials, including position types and professional and cultural backgrounds. And finally, this study demonstrates that the campaign-style governance behavior of local officials has a moderating effect on the relationship between environmental pollution and local officials' promotion. Ultimately the article proposes that higher government levels should adopt the effective incentives policy to address gaps between environmental policy and implementation., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE part of Springer Nature.)

Whether environmental regulations are conducive to improving green innovation in water pollution-intensive enterprises (WPIEs) is of guiding significance for China's protection of the water ecosystem environment and sustainable economic development. This study regards the implementation of the "Ten-point Water Plan" (TWP) policy in 2015 as a purely exogenous event for enterprises and employs a quasi-experimental method to fill this gap based on the panel data of Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2019. The results reveal that TWP policy has significant negative effects on the green innovation of WPIEs, the main mechanism of which is increased compliance costs. In addition, a heterogeneity analysis shows that the negative effect is stronger for green innovation activities with higher costs and for WPIEs subject to stricter environmental regulations. This paper provides new evidence against the weak Porter hypothesis and implies that WPIEs are likely to purchase technologies and equipment to reduce wastewater emissions rather than green innovation, which means incentive-based measures should be taken to foster green innovation in the environmental policymaking process., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Ecological poverty alleviation (EPA) is an effective strategy to address the vicious circle of poverty and environmental destruction in poor areas. However, it remains controversial whether this strategy has really succeeded in this respect. Previous research investigated the impact of a certain factor on EPA, and only few studies integrated them to explore their differential effects, thereby overlooking the complexity of EPA. Therefore, this study quantified the overall efficiency of the EPA strategies of 28 poor counties in three provinces of Northeast China from 2005 to 2018 by using a super-efficiency slacks-based measure model. This model can take into account undesirable outputs; as such, it has significant advantages in measuring the coordination among economic and social development and environmental protection. The Tobit model was used to explore the factors influencing EPA efficiency. The results show that, first, the majority of counties investigated had an EPA efficiency below the overall national average. Second, as for the factors influencing EPA efficiency, it was found that (1) GDP per capita and investment in environmental governance favored EPA efficiency, as they are conducive to stimulating regional consumption dynamics and achieving green economic development; (2) science and technology expenditure and urbanization were not conducive to EPA efficiency; and (3) industrial structure and trade had insignificant effects on EPA efficiency, due to the small scale of industry and the inadequacy of the policy system. This study assessed EPA efficiency from a holistic perspective, and addressed the controversies over EPA's influencing factors, thereby providing an effective method to conduct regional EPA assessment and improve EPA performance in poor regions of China., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Strengthening environmental governance and green low-carbon policies is a key measure to improve agriculture green total factor productivity and develop sustainable agriculture. Against this background, this study explores the relationship between agriculture green total factor productivity (AGTFP), environmental governance, and green low carbon policies based on panel data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2005 to 2019, and the system generalized method of moments model is adopted. The empirical results are as follows: (1) Environmental governance will not only directly affect AGTFP, but also indirectly affect AGTFP by influencing green technology innovation. (2) Environmental governance can strengthen the promotion of green low-carbon policies to AGTFP. (3) There are regional differences in causality among AGTFP, environmental governance, and green low-carbon policies. These empirical results offer Chinese policymakers scientific and normative recommendations for improving AGTFP and developing sustainable green agriculture., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Environmental regulation becomes essential to corporate technological innovation amid increasing concern with environmental issues. However, a clear understanding of the specific role of environmental regulation's ex-post effectiveness is lacking. Using the panel data of Chinese A-share listed firms during 2011-2018, we examine the effects of environmental regulation on corporate technological innovation. The results indicate that environmental regulation negatively affects corporate technological innovation. With regard to digital finance, it benefits for corporate technological innovation and positively moderates the relationship between environmental regulation and corporate technological innovation. The heterogeneity analysis suggests that the negative impact of environmental regulation over technological innovation is much significant for small-scale firms, western-region firms, and firms with strong financing constraints. Furthermore, the moderating role of digital finance is more significant for firms with strong financing constraints and heavy polluting firms. We also verify the robustness of the regression results. The current study provides both theoretical support and reference to improve corporate technological innovation and promote high-quality economic development through adopting reasonable policy measures., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

As a financial innovation model to promote sustainable economic development, carbon finance promotes green and inclusive economic development by reshaping the financial system. As a big energy consumer, China has been committed to the green transformation of energy structure, and carbon finance has been regarded as an important tool to support carbon emission reduction. This paper divides carbon finance from three levels, financial macro, environmental governance, and technological development, and selects 17 indexes to measure the development level of carbon finance in China. Time series regression model and the entropy weight method (EWM) are used to analyze the impact of carbon finance on China's energy consumption structure. The empirical results show that carbon finance plays a positive role in promoting China's energy consumption structure, and developing carbon finance is conducive to the use of clean energy and the optimization of energy consumption structure in China; carbon finance can further optimize China's energy consumption structure by investing capital, resources, and technology in industries related to promoting clean energy consumption. Therefore, China should continue to develop carbon finance and promote the establishment of a unified national carbon trading market; at the same time, China should use the CCER trading mechanism to promote the development of renewable energy and enhance the endogenous driving force of energy transformation by promoting technological progress., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

China has maintained great economic growth in the past and reached the status of a middle-income country. Meanwhile, the relationships among environmental pollution, environmental regulation, and economic growth have attracted wide attention. In addition, some studies have shown that economic growth is not balanced in the division of income between labor and capital, and this has become one of the most important issues in China. The conflict over the environment and income distribution is supposed to cause social welfare loss; therefore, we want to examine the impact of environmental pollution and environmental governance on labor income share. Our empirical results show that the relationship between environmental pollution and share of labor income is positive at the present stage. However, the relationship is not linear but rather an inverted-U shape in the long run. In addition, we tested the effects of environmental regulation on labor income share and found an inverted-U-shaped relationship. Although growing concern about environmental pollution adds to the pressure on the government, our statistical results suggest that there is no perfect way to resolve environmental problems. Additionally, labor unions are expected to play a different role in income distribution.

Environmental problems are endowed with the causal complexity of multiple factors. Traditional quantitative research on the influencing mechanism of environmental pollution has tended to focus on the marginal effects of specific influencing factors but generally neglected the multiple interaction effects between factors (especially three or more). Based on the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces between 2011 and 2020, this study employs fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) - which can provide a fine-grained insight into the causal complexity of environmental issues - to shed light on the influencing mechanism of environmental pollution. The results show that there are several different configurations of pollution drivers which lead to high pollution or low pollution in provinces, confirming the multiple causality, causal asymmetry, and equifinality of environmental pollution. Furthermore, the combination effect of advanced industrial structure, small population size, and technological advance is significant in achieving a state of green environment compared to environmental regulation factors. In addition, spatiotemporal analysis of the configurations indicates that strong path dependencies and spatial agglomeration exist in current local environmental governance patterns. Finally, according to our findings, targeted policy recommendations are provided., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The relationship between environmental regulation and economic growth is difficult to reconcile, resulting in the "involutionary" dilemma of local government environmental governance. Using panel data from Chinese A-share listed industrial companies between 2010 and 2019, this paper collected data on environmental protection interview and central environmental protection inspection and empirically investigated the impact of both on high-quality economic growth of companies using the difference-in-difference method. First, both environmental protection interview and central environmental protection inspection significantly promote high-quality economic growth, according to the findings. Second, the two-pronged policy effect of environmental protection interview and central environmental protection inspection is more significant, and the promotion effect on high-quality economic growth is greater than the effect of the two policies separately. Third, the dual policy action significantly promotes high-quality economic growth of state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises; however, non-state-owned enterprise economic growth is more sensitive to the central environmental protection inspection, and policy effects show a heterogeneous pattern in the east, central, and west regions. Therefore, the effective integration of environmental protection interview and central environmental protection inspection should be accelerated so that environmental pollution control and economic growth can be carried out together., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

In recent years, economic growth has caused an increasing number of environmental problems in China. In order to achieve the goal of carbon peak on schedule, enterprises need to accelerate green transformation and upgrading. Environmental protection expenditure and green technology innovation are important means of corporate environmental governance strategy, but it is unknown whether they can promote the sustainable development of enterprises. Therefore, this article will analyze the effect of enterprise environmental protection expenditure and green technology innovation on financial performance. Based on relevant theories, this study builds a theoretical model to demonstrate how enterprise environmental protection expenditure and green technology innovation can affect the financial performance of heavy polluting enterprises. Empirical tests are carried out using 293 heavy polluting enterprises in China as the sample. The results reveal that: (i) Enterprise environmental protection expenditure has significant negative effects on current enterprise financial performance, while green technology innovation can significantly promote enterprise financial performance. (ii) When the lag period is two periods, the enterprise environmental protection expenditure and green technology innovation have positive effects on enterprise financial performance respectively, and the effects are the most significant. (iii) Enterprise environmental protection expenditure and green technology innovation synergistically promote enterprise financial performance in the current period, and the impact has a lag effect. (iv) In state-owned enterprises and enterprises with higher corporate governance level, the synergetic promotion effect of environmental protection expenditure and green technology innovation on enterprise financial performance is more significant. Finally, this study provides suggestions for promoting the transformation and upgrading of heavy polluting enterprises and achieving sustainable development from the perspectives of the government, enterprises and the public., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Environmental stringency policy shocks and environmental tax have become fundamental policy tools for mitigating the degradation of the environment. The study explores the effects of environmental tax and environmental stringency policy shocks in the reduction of pollution emissions in China for the time 1993 to 2019. This study is a pioneer in assessing the simultaneous impact of these two policy instruments on pollution emissions in China. For empirical investigation, the study employed NARDL estimation techniques. The NARDL results show that positive shocks in environmental tax reduce N2O emissions by 0.03%, PM2.5 emissions by 0.13%, CO 2 emissions by 0.18%, and GHGs emissions by 0.01%, however, negative shocks in environmental tax increase N 2 O emissions by 0.01%, PM2.5 emissions by 0.07%, CO 2 emissions by 0.28%, GHGs emissions by 0.17% in the long run. The long-run results also show that positive shocks in environmental policy stringency reduced CO 2 emissions by 0.94%, GHGs emissions by 0.77%, while negative shocks in environmental policy stringency increased N 2 O emissions by 0.17%, PM2.5 emissions by 0.50%, CO 2 emissions by 0.63%. The findings suggest vigorous policy implications., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Environmental regulations affect employment through productivity output and factor substitution. This paper employs a difference-in-differences (DID) method to investigate the effect of China's Two Control Zones (TCZ) policy on the urban employment in 287 cities from 1994 to 2009. We apply the DID method to two time points: 1998 for policy issuance and 2000 for the policy implementation. From the results of analyses on full-sample cities, the TCZ policy did not contribute to increasing total urban employment. Moreover, a negative impact on employment resulted from sulfur dioxide and acid rain controls in secondary and tertiary industries, respectively. In the acid rain control zone, the TCZ policy increased the average wage of urban workers. Negative effects on employment were observed in larger cities. The policy triggered labor migration from larger to smaller cities, resulting in significant increases in primary and tertiary industry employment in smaller cities, although the effects on mid-size cities were insignificant. This study provides important empirical evidence and insight into the impact of the TCZ policy on urban employment.

The existing literature on smart city pilots mainly focuses on the city level and rarely addresses the firm level. This paper assesses the impact of smart city pilot policy (SCP) on firms' total factor productivity (TFP) and explores the impact of SCP under different heterogeneities as well as the mechanisms of action of the SCP. The LP approach is used in this paper to measure firms' TFP, and the impact of SCP is analyzed by the DID model with firms' panel data from 2009 to 2019 as research objects. First, it was found that the SCP can significantly increase the TFP of firms (0.041). Second, through heterogeneity analysis, we found that SCP can strengthen the monopoly position of monopolistic firms and state-owned enterprises. Moreover, the SCP can also alleviate the development imbalance of TFP between firms in coastal and non-coastal areas. In addition, SCP can significantly improve TFP of heavy polluting enterprises. Finally, we find that the important ways for SCP to improve firms' TFP is increasing investment in technological innovation, talent agglomeration, attracting financing, improving resource allocation efficiency, and digital transformation. The study provides unique insights for policy makers and business managers in China and other emerging countries to enhance TFP and achieve corporate sustainable development., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Taking the green credit policy in 2012 as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper has investigated the impact of green credit policy on Chinese firms' green strategy choices by using the panel data of A-share listed firms from 2008 to 2019. The results reveal that green credit improves firms' green innovation overall. In terms of time, the green-washing behavior of listed firms will increase significantly in the early stage of the implementation of green credit policy, but as time goes by, such green behavior of firms will be detected, which in turn will motivate firms to improve green innovation. Furthermore, the green credit policy has a more significant effect on green innovation of firms in localities under high environmental regulation, economically developed regions, and without other alternative financing channels. Firms located in regions with economically underdeveloped and low environmental regulation are more inclined to adopt the behavior of green-washing environmental information. Besides, after the implementation of the green credit policy, green innovation can improve corporate financial, environmental, and social performance, while green-washing behavior will damage corporate financial, environmental, and social performance. Our findings contribute to the literature on green credit policy, corporate green innovation, and environmental information disclosure, and also provide policy implications for improving the quality of green credit policy in the future., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This paper used a dynamic spatial panel model to empirically analyze the effects of environmental regulation, market demand, and the associated spatial spillovers on regional green innovation in China, from which the following was found. (1) The environmental regulations had a positive "U-shaped" effect on local green innovation and a positive neighborhood spillover effect, and market demand had a significant positive effect on local green innovation and a "ripple effect." (2) The mechanism analysis found that the environmental regulations tended to inhibit regional green innovation input through a "cost compliance" effect, and market demand had a stronger incentive effect on innovation input than the environmental regulations, thus promoting the improvement of green innovation level. (3) The environmental regulation and market demand effects on green innovation had obvious spatial and temporal heterogeneity. The results of this study could help to promote regional green innovation by formulating reasonable environmental policies and stimulating the vitality of green technology market., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Public policies often fail to address the unintended behavior of regulated firms and are therefore inconsistent in their implementation, resulting in ineffectiveness. In the process of environmental policy, policy implementation inconsistencies also exist, which is known as emission leakage. Existing studies on the topic focus more on spatial dimension and less attention to time dimension. The reasons for emission leakage over time are two: regulatory laxness and inefficiencies. In this study, we examine whether emission leakage occurs during enterprises' end-of-life cycles. Based on unique high-frequency facility-level monitoring data, we construct a difference-in-differences (DID) model to investigate differences in environmental performance between hazardous chemical production firms in the process of closing and those in the same industry within 20 kilometers. This study finds no emission leakage problem in the processes of relocation and closure, and the concentration of chemical oxygen demand (COD) discharged declines by 28.53 percent. This result is mainly due to top-down regulatory requirements. Nevertheless, policymakers should remain aware of emission leakage when formulating environmental policies and create more substantial supervision to prevent potential leakage., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

An enterprise's green value chain comprises a multitude of factors and links for a successful green transformation, and relevant environmental policies are multi-dimensional and multi-sectional. Environmental policies can affect the enterprise's green development through stimulating the supply of green services or by increasing the demand for green products. Based on 346 policy statements issued by various government departments from 2000 to 2020, this paper matches the "type" of environmental policy with the "dimension" of value chain of manufacturing companies, establishing a coordination model and a co-existing network to measure how both elements interact. The results indicate a notable phenomenon with the Chinese government's enterprise environmental policies, which can be described as "heavy supply-driven, light demand-pull." A strong emphasis is put on the supply side of policies, in particular for the technology innovation sector, but the demand end of policies is comparatively minimal. The synergy between the policies and the links in the green value chain is divergent, which replicates the "heavy end-treatment, light front-prevention" seen with existing policies. Policy synergy at the end of the value chain such as the green production process is more mature and well-integrated, while the synergy for green product development lacks policies on both ends. The mismatch and imbalance of policies limits the overall level of green transformation for manufacturing enterprises., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

On the basis of the "Pilot System of the Ecological Damage Compensation" launched in 2015 and a research sample of listed companies in China's heavy pollution industry from 2014 to 2017, this paper uses a difference-in-differences model to empirically evaluate the impact of the damage compensation system on corporate environmental investment, as well as the moderating effect of market degree and firm ownership. The result shows that the implementation of the damage compensation system significantly promotes corporate environmental investment and that the market degree exerts a moderating effect. The effect of supervision remains the same because of firm ownership. This research uses a pilot policy to form a natural experimental group to accurately identify the impact of environmental supervision on corporate environmental investment. The aforementioned conclusions recognize the need for the construction of the ecological damage compensation system, provide a reference for the national government to formulate specific effective environmental policies, stimulate the environmental governance motivation of regional governments, and encourage enterprises to assume environmental responsibilities and thereby achieve green sustainable development., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Most of the existing studies on the pollution haven hypothesis focus on the foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow, ignoring the divestment of FDI and the role of competition. Based on Chinese firm-level data, we investigate the relationship between environmental regulation (ER) and the exit of foreign firms from China. The results indicate that ER does not cause foreign firms to leave China, but rather reduces the probability of foreign firms exiting China. This effect is present in eastern China and the medium-polluting industries. We innovatively explore the underlying mechanisms from the perspective of firm competition and market competition environment. Firm competition mechanism finds that ER promotes foreign firms' business performance (market share, profits, and productivity) but undermines the domestic firms' business performance, thus reducing the probability of foreign firms leaving. Furthermore, the market competition environment plays a positive moderating effect. ER has a greater role in reducing the probability of foreign firms' exit when regions have higher market competition. Our findings offer a basis for the Chinese government to formulate environmental protection policies and provide experience for other developing countries., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This paper examines the impact of shadow economy and environmental policy stringency on energy consumption and economic growth in the case of China for the period 1993 to 2019. Asymmetric ARDL empirical findings show that positive shocks in shadow economy and environmental policy stringency have a significant and positive impact on energy consumption and economic growth in the long run. However, the negative shocks in shadow economy exert positive and significant impacts on energy consumption and economic growth in the long run, but magnitudes are small compared to positive shocks. The long-run findings report no significant effect of negative shock in environmental policy stringency on energy consumption and economic growth. China should use environmental policy stringency as economic tools to maintain green economic growth and clean energy demand for sustained economic expansion. Policymakers should focus on the inclusion of environmental policy stringency in any future environment strategy., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

To investigate the latent relation between technology innovation and eco-environmental systems and promote their coordinated development, we integrated the coupling coordination model and panel vector autoregressive model to examine the evidence from China. The research reveals that the technology innovation benefit and eco-environmental governance and endowment are the prominent factors for optimizing the two systems. Moreover, the findings show that the coupling coordination degree of eco-environment and technology innovation in China presents an upward trend. In terms of the dynamic interaction between technology innovation and eco-environment, the influence of the former on the latter is timely while that of the latter on the former is lagging (except for the central region). The weak coupling coordination degree implies that the mutual promotion of technology innovation and eco-environmental systems has not yet formed. The policy implications are proposed accordingly to promote coordinated development of eco-environment and technology innovation in China., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The development of urbanization has brought new challenges to the ecological environment, and the promotion of green technology innovation and development is widely recognized as an essential method to achieve cities' economic benefits and environmental protection. This paper examines whether the new urbanization pilot policies (NUP) increase green technology innovation (GTI) from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. This paper examines the impact of new urbanization on GTI by analyzing data from 285 cities in China between 2010 and 2021, using the multi-period DID model with the implementation of NUP as an exogenous policy shock. The study results indicate that NUP significantly affects GTI, and the conclusion still holds after the parallel trend test, placebo test, and other robustness tests. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the NUP significantly enhances GTI in low environmental pollution, non-resource-based, Medium-sized, and Central Region cities. The test of moderating effect shows that NUP has a "linkage effect" with the government's environmental attention, financial investment in innovation, and regional talent pooling. The findings of this paper provide empirical evidence and decision-making reference for promoting NUP and sustainable development of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A network data envelopment analysis slack-based measure (NSBM) was applied to explore the thermal power generation environmental governance efficiency (TGGE) of 30 provinces in China except Tibet from 2006 to 2015, and then the threshold panel data model was established to study the nonlinear impact of cost-based environmental regulation (CER) on TGGE. The results show that (1) thermal power generation efficiency (TGE) is relatively low but shows a fluctuation growth trend, and TGGE is lower than thermal power generation production efficiency (TGPE); (2) CER has a significant single-threshold effect on the TGGE in China. When the proportion of CER to gross domestic production (GDP) is less than 3.023, the regulation has a significant positive effect on TGGE, while when the proportion of CER to GDP is larger than 3.023, the positive effect is greatly reduced from 0.073 to 0.002. The same conclusion can be obtained using the ratio of CER to gross industrial output value as the threshold variable, although with a different threshold value. From the average value of the sample period, for the vast majority of provinces, the effects of CER on TGGE are not significant. Based on these, relevant policy implications are presented to further promote TGGE.

As China's ecological environmental problem becomes severe, corporate environmental behavior (CEB) has become the focus of a range of stakeholders, policy makers and the whole society since the operating activities of companies is the main source of environmental pollution. This study used a questionnaire survey and structural equation model (SEM) to examine the relative importance of external and internal pressures (EIP) on driving CEB. Data was obtained from 702 papermaking companies in China. The mechanism of EIP effects on CEB was tested employing SEM through path analysis, using AMOS 21.0. The results showed that government pressure, economic pressure and internal pressure played significant positive roles in environmental behavior of papermaking companies in China. Economic pressure was the most important factor on environmental behaviors (including defensive, accommodative and proactive behaviors) of papermaking companies. Furthermore, the role of internal pressure on CEB (defensive and proactive) was second only to economic pressure, while the role of government pressure on CEB was much weaker than our expectation. However, the role of social pressure, which was imposed by general public and environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), was not significant. Thus, policy makers should emphasize on the interactions of economic mechanism, government regulation and internal incentive mechanism to stimulate firms to adopt active environmental behavior. More concerns from the general public shall be addressed to enhance their driving effect on CEB in Chinese papermaking industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the double pressures of economic growth and ecological environment protection, sea green transformation and the sustainable development of mariculture are critical. This paper constructs an evolutionary game model with the government as the main body and mariculture farmers (enterprises) as the main body and puts forward the research hypothesis. Based on 2006–2019 longitudinal data of nine provinces along China's coast, using multi-period Difference-in-Difference (DID) and dual robust estimation, we empirically investigate the national oceanic ranch demonstration zones for the influence of the green sea aquaculture and their mechanism of action. The results showed that (1) the efficiency of green level of mariculture industry in China is not high, and the establishment of national marine pasture demonstration zone has not effectively promoted the improvement of green level of mariculture industry; (2) the institutional environment, unreasonable industrial structure, and lack of scientific and technological innovation have an effect on the national oceanic ranch demonstration area as the main causes of failure to effectively promote marine green farming; (3) the establishment of the national multi-period demonstration area in the north significantly hindered the growth of the green level of mariculture and fell into the "policy trap", while the establishment of the national multi-period demonstration area in the south significantly promoted the growth of the green level of mariculture. The conclusions of this paper provide an empirical basis and reference for the improvement of the national marine pasture demonstration zone policy and the green transformation of mariculture to a certain extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green innovation (GI) is an important means of achieving a win-win outcome in the form of both economic development and environmental protection. Using a unique Chinese Patent Census Database to identify the quantity and quality of GI in each province and panel data for Chinese industrial sector in 30 provinces from 2002 to 2015, we investigated the impact of environmental regulation (ER) on GI in China. This study presents the first attempt to identify green innovation quality in China. Empirical results show that there is an inverted-U relationship between ER and GI. The heterogenous effects are further investigated in order to obtain more accurate policy implications. The results indicate that the impact of ER on GI is insignificant in the central and western regions, implying the necessity of adjusting ER policies in these regions. Second, the inverted U-shaped relationship between ER and GI only occurred in provinces with high state-owned enterprise (SOE) ratio, figuring out the special role of Chinese SOEs in promoting GI. Third, the impact of ER on GI is insignificant in regions with high levels of pollution, indicating high potential of green innovation and policy adjustments there.