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The first goal of this research was to measure the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the sustainable development of an organization. However, the second objective examines the moderating influence of government policies, cultural norms, and stakeholder expectations on the relationship between CSR and an organization's sustainable development. This research primarily focused on the enterprises operating in the energy industry in Beijing. A sample of 498 individuals holding management positions within these enterprises was collected. The study's results established that CSR significantly influences the sustainable development of firms. Moreover, the results revealed that governmental regulations, cultural norms, and stakeholder expectations play a significant and positive role in moderating the impact of corporate social responsibility on the sustainable development of companies. The results of this study make a valuable contribution to the existing body of literature on CSR and its impact on the sustainable performance of enterprises in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The financial performance of Chinese public and private sector banks is changing over time. There is no stability in the financial performance of Chinese banks which hurts businesses and the market. The purpose of current research was to determine the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on driving the sustainable financial performance of Chinese banks. From methodological perspective, data was collected from 329 banking sector employees from China to partial least square–structural equation model (PLS-SEM) is employed for data analysis. The research used SPSS 24 and Smart PLS 4 as statistical analysis tools. This research confirmed that achieving sustainability in financial performance for Chinese banks can be achieved with CSR influenced by technological innovation, ethical leadership, and government regulations. This research has statistically confirmed that transformational leadership leading to CSR with technological innovation, ethical leadership, and government regulations can make significant improvements in financial performance. The framework developed by current research is a novel contribution to the literature. The findings of this research improve the literature on the banking sector and advanced performance. Furthermore, this research has highlighted significant ways that can help the banking sector employees to improve their financial performance with sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1994 China's tax-sharing reform, land finance has far-reaching influence on fiscal system and has critical implications for green development and industrial structure optimization. Previous studies have largely focused on the environmental aspect of land finance by considering carbon emissions as environmental indicator only and ignored social and economic aspects. To fill the research gaps, this study analyzed spatial and moderating effects of land finance on green development through rationalized industrial structure, quantity of advanced industrial structure, and quality of advanced industrial structure in 246 Chinese cities from 2006 to 2019. The results document that local and surrounding land finance have negative effect on China's green development. Local land finance inhibits green development in western and large cities, while surrounding land finance deteriorates in eastern and large cities. Through mediation of industrial structure optimization, land finance accelerates green development in national, eastern, and large cities. In western cities, land finance promotes green development through quantity and quality of industrial structure upgrading. In small- and medium-sized cities, quantity of industrial structure upgrading plays a positive role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization is a social and complex phenomenon. In recent years, rapid urbanization has not only accelerated economic development in China, but also has raised ecological concerns including biodiversity reduction, habitat degradation and congestion effect, which poses significant challenges to green economic efficiency. Although China proposed its first ecological civilization strategy in 2007, as stressed in the thirteenth Five-Year Plan (2016–2020), resource shortages and environmental degradation caused by urbanization processes have created a bottleneck effect, thus restricting China's green economic efficiency. Therefore, this study aims to determine how heterogeneous environmental regulations affect China's green economic efficiency from the perspective of urbanization over the period 2003–2017. The results of static and dynamic threshold regressions show that command-and-control and voluntary environmental regulations promote green economic efficiency at different urbanization levels. In static threshold model, market-based environmental regulation stimulates green economic efficiency when urbanization is below the first threshold and above the second threshold, while it constrains green economic efficiency when urbanization is between the single and the double thresholds. In dynamic threshold model, market-based environmental regulation improves green economic efficiency when urbanization is below the threshold and impedes it when urbanization exceeds the threshold. Finally, several important policy recommendations are documented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is experiencing a swift transformation from a rural to an urban society. This societal transition is the result of a country's ambition toward economic development. Rapid urbanization impacts on human wellbeing, environment, and infrastructure. Unlike many cases of urban extension, China's urbanization has led to increase in environmental issues, rather than to contain, and posed serious challenges to achieve sustainable development. To date, nevertheless, there is a little empirical enquiry on the spatiotemporal effects of multidimensional urbanization on green total factor productivity. Taking this into account, this article constructs a spatial panel data model based on 283 Chinese cities during 2006–2019. The results showed that the three types of urbanization (i.e., population, land, and economic) have positive effect on green total factor productivity (GTFP). Population urbanization has indirect positive effect on GTFP. Local land urbanization inhibits while surrounding land urbanization promotes GTFP. Economic urbanization has positive direct effect on GTFP. Considering regional heterogeneity, population and economic urbanization have positive effect on GTFP in eastern region. In central region, land urbanization significantly promotes GTFP, while economic urbanization has significant negative effect on GTFP. In the western region, the three types of urbanization are not conducive to GTFP. Considering sized heterogeneity, population and economic types of urbanization have significant negative effect on GTFP in small- and medium-sized cities. In large cities, the three types of urbanization have significant positive effects on GTFP. Considering temporal heterogeneity, the three types of urbanization significantly promote GTFP before 2014, but economic urbanization deteriorates GTFP after 2014. Our results recommend loosening Hukou system, improving land use efficiency, and developing technology and knowledge-intensive industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green innovation is an effective path to decrease environmental pollutions. It is of immense interest to evaluate the roles of green innovation on SO2 emissions reduction. We also investigate the static and dynamic threshold effect of human capital in the impacting paths of different innovations on SO2 emissions. The empirical results show that the design patent increases SO2 emissions while the development of utility patent can decrease SO2 emissions based on the static analysis and dynamic analysis. Both the "pollution halo" and the "pollution heaven" hypotheses of foreign direct investment (FDI) are validated in China. Moreover, green innovation positively affects SO2 emission reduction based on the System Generalized Method of Moment (SYS‐GMM) estimation. Both static and dynamic panel threshold regression results reveal that the positive effects of different innovations will become larger when human capital exceeds the corresponding threshold values. Hence, it is important to enhance green human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial upgrading is the key to promoting green economic efficiency. Coordination between environmental regulations and industrial structure can lead to sustainable economic growth. However, insufficient attention has been paid to the mechanism by which environmental regulation (ER) promote green economic efficiency (GEE) under the mediating role of industrial structure optimization. Using robust and comprehensive measures of green economic efficiency, we assess how various environmental regulations affect green economic efficiency as well as the intermediate effect of industrial structure of a certain province with provincial panel data during the period 2003–2017. The results of dynamic panel two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) confirm the heterogeneous effects of the three types of ER, namely control-and-command regulation, market-based regulation, and voluntary regulation on GEE in China. The spatial analysis demonstrates that control-and-command and voluntary regulations significantly accelerate GEE in inland provinces, while they have insignificant effect in coastal provinces. Based on the mediating analysis, we find that market-based regulation is conducive to GEE through both advanced and rationalized industrial structure, whereas control-and-command regulation improves GEE through advanced industrial structure only. The voluntary-based regulation on one hand stimulates GEE through advanced industrial structure, but on other hand impedes it through rationalized industrial structure. The results could provide critical insights and a theoretical basis for policy makers in reasonable optimization of industrial structure and guaranteeing green economic efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the world second largest economy, China aims at achieving high-quality and innovation-driven development. This paper investigates the effects of different technological innovations on green productivity in 261 Chinese cities from 2004 to 2017. We employ the super-efficiency Epsilon-based measure (EBM) model with undesirable outputs under meta frontier and a global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) index. We decompose the GML index into efficiency change (GEC) index and technology change (GTC) index to measure the dynamic changes of China's urban green development. Results showed that the average GML index is 0.924 thereby, indicating China's urban green development is at a decreasing trend. The eastern region had the highest GML index among three regions followed by the western region. Moreover, we explored the determinants of urban green productivity through panel quantile regression and found the heterogeneous impacts of different technological innovations on green productivity. Invention patents and design patents positively affected the urban green productivity while utility patents exerted a significantly negative influence. Invention patents promoted the GTC and GEC index while utility patents impeded at some quantiles. FDI yielded both "Pollution Halo Hypothesis" and "Pollution Heaven Hypothesis" effects. Invention, utility and design patents all have threshold effects on China's green productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green development is main direction of high-quality economic development in China. Urbanisation and human capital (HC) are important factors affecting green development. This study examines effects of urbanisation and HC on green total factor productivity (GTFP) using least squares dummy variable model, based on provincial data in China from 2001 to 2019. This study then explored impact of urbanisation on GTFP through HC (educated HC, healthy HC, and HC structure), adopting mediating effect and threshold effect model. The results showed that urbanisation and three types of HC promote GTFP in China and coastal region. In inland region, urbanisation has insignificant impact on GTFP, while educated HC and HC structure improve it. The mediating analysis revealed that educated and healthy HC in China and coastal region enhance promotion effect of urbanisation on GTFP, whereas HC structure hinders it. In inland region, only healthy HC stimulates promotion effect of urbanisation on GTFP. Considering threshold effect of educated and healthy HC, promotion effect of urbanisation on GTFP is weaker than threshold value; but effect is stronger above threshold value. The promotion effect of urbanisation on GTFP is stronger when value of HC structure is below the threshold, while effect is weakened as value exceeds threshold value. Policy implications are documented to promote urbanisation in a differentiated manner, increase investment in HC, and strengthen coordination between urbanisation and HC., (© 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

In late 2019, a novel infectious disease with human to human transmission (COVID-19) was identified in Wuhan China, which now has turned into a global pandemic. Countries all over the world have implemented some sort of lockdown to slow down its infection and mitigate it. Lockdown due to COVID-19 has drastic effects on social and economic fronts. However, this lockdown also has some positive effect on natural environment. Recent data released by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and ESA (European Space Agency) indicates that pollution in some of the epicenters of COVID-19 such as Wuhan, Italy, Spain and USA etc. has reduced up to 30%. This study compiled the environmental data released by NASA and ESA before and after the coronavirus pandemic and discusses its impact on environmental quality., 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 © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)