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Environmental regulation faces theoretical and practical research challenges on global scale, due to differences such as language and policy environment. Research reflects the beneficial exploration of scholars, policymakers, and enterprises in the cognitive and behavioural norms of economic development, environmental protection, and social governance. This study demonstrated that the relevant research is motivated by the enaction of environmental regulations and discussed the influence of relevant research on the evolution of environmental regulations. Under the assumption that environmental regulations are consistent with related research, this study used 9185 papers in the field of environmental regulation from 2000 to 2019 to construct a research network panorama and explored the development and revelation of environmental regulation. The results revealed that environmental regulation research is motivated by the introduction of policies, and regulation is influenced by research evolution with the path of 'competitiveness-technological change-innovation.' In addition, after the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21), the number of studies increased significantly, with the USA in the leading position in the research field. Furthermore, governance strategies were inspired by real events, including the increasing concern with climate change, regional research preferences, and the promotion of information disclosure. These results suggest that environmental governors should focus on climate change, localisation, and mechanisms of information disclosure.

The impact of the digital economy is increasing, and its environmental effect has attracted more and more attention. The digital economy promotes the improvement of production efficiency and the government's environmental governance capacity, and contributes to the reduction of urban carbon emission intensity. In order to study the impact of digital economy development on urban carbon emission intensity, this paper analyzes the theoretical basis of the digital economy on the reduction of carbon emission intensity, and then, based on the panel data of cities from 2011 to 2019, uses the two-way fixed effect model for empirical testing. The regression results show that the development of the digital economy has promoted the reduction of carbon emission intensity of cities, promoted the green transformation and upgrading of cities, and lays a foundation for China to achieve carbon peaking and carbon neutralization through the improvement of human capital investment and green innovation level. The basic conclusion is robust by changing core explanatory variables, changing samples, replacing regression methods, and shrinking and truncating tests. The impact of the digital economy on urban carbon emission intensity varies with the location, grade and size of the city. Specifically, the development of the digital economy in cities in the eastern and central regions, cities at or above the sub provincial level, large cities and non-resource-based cities has promoted the reduction of urban carbon emission intensity. In terms of resource-based cities, the development of the digital economy in renewable resource-based cities and resource-based cities dominated by iron ore and oil mining has promoted the decline in urban carbon emission reduction intensity.

In the process of China's economic transformation, enterprises urgently need to use green innovation networks to realize corporate sustainability. Based on resource-based theory, this study explores the internal mechanism and boundary conditions of green innovation network embeddedness that affect corporate environmental responsibility. This paper conducts an empirical study based on panel data of listed companies engaged in green innovation in China from 2010 to 2020. Drawing on network embeddedness theory and resource-based theory, we found that relational and structural embeddedness influenced green reputation, which affected corporate environmental responsibility. We also identified the importance of ethical leadership and examined its role in moderating the effect of green innovation network embeddedness. A further investigation revealed that the impact of network embeddedness on corporate environmental responsibility was particularly pronounced in the samples of enterprises with high-level political ties, loose financing restrictions, and nonstate ownership. Our findings highlight the advantages of embedded green innovation networks and offer theoretical references and recommendations for enterprises considering network participation. Enterprises should attach great importance to the network embedding strategy of green innovation for corporate environmental responsibility and actively integrate the concept of green development into network relationship embedding and network structure embedding. Moreover, the relevant government department should provide necessary environment incentive policies according to the enterprise's development needs, especially for the enterprises with low-level political ties, high financing restrictions, and state ownership.

Analyzing the spatial difference and convergence of ecological common prosperity (ECP) in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) will be beneficial for the environmental governance and multi-regional economic coordination. Based on the panel data of 97 cities in the YRB from 2003 to 2019, this paper measured and analyzed the index of ECP, the Gini coefficient of ECP, and the convergence of ECP. The results indicate that the ECP of YRB shows a steady growth trend (with an average growth rate of 4.71% yearly) and the overall differences are low (average Gini coefficient is 0.1509 from 2003 to 2019). In different areas, the Gini coefficient between the medium-stream and downstream of YRB is the largest (average value of Gini coefficient is 0.1561). From the decomposition of the overall differences of ECP, the contribution degree of the density of transvariation is the highest for annual average, with a contribution rate of 43.37%, the rate of intra-regional and the inter-regional differences are 31.86% and 24.77%, respectively. The results indicate that the overall differences of ECP in YRB are getting smaller because of cooperation and governance, but the differences between and within regions exist because of geographical feature. There is a significant spatial β convergence trend of ECP, the convergence rate in the upstream and downstream area is faster under the economic geographical matrix than others, and the rate in the medium-stream area is faster under the administrative adjacency matrix. Therefore, strengthening economic and environmental cooperation between and within regions is more beneficial to achieve a better quality of life, as well as the long-term goals of 2035.

Promoting environmental governance to achieve green and low-carbon development is the focus of attention from all walks of life. As a policy tool to control environmental pollution, the effectiveness of environmental audits remains to be verified. Based on China's provincial data from 2004 to 2019, this paper aims to examine the impact and mechanisms of government environmental auditing on environmental quality. Results show that government environmental auditing helps to improve overall environmental quality, but there is a certain lag effect occurring. The heterogeneity test suggests that the impact of environmental auditing on comprehensive environmental quality is more significant when the government competition is smaller, the financial situation is better, and the institutional environment is weaker. Our analysis provides empirical evidence for understanding the role and function of government environmental auditing in environmental governance.

Waste classification is the key initiative to solve environmental pollution and achieve resource recycling, environmental improvement, and high-quality development in rural areas. Under the perspective of "external support-internal drive", this paper adopts the survey data of 2628 rural residents in Jiangsu province to analyze the influence and spatial effect of policy support (PS) on the behavior and effectiveness of rural residents' domestic waste separation and the mediating effect of environmental protection perception using the PSM and Sobel test. The study found that: (1) PS has a significant positive effect on the governance of the domestic residents' waste classification in rural areas. The variation in classification behavior (BWC) is more obvious than classification effectiveness (EWC). (2) PS has a significant difference in the positive influence on waste separation by regions. Specifically, the enhancement effect of PS on BWC decreases from south to north, and the enhancement effect on EWC is more obvious in southern Jiangsu than in central Jiangsu, but not significant in northern Jiangsu. (3) The mediating effect indicates that PS promotes the enhancement of BWC and EWC by strengthening farmers' environmental protection perceptions, and the effect of EWC enhancement is more obvious. Drawing on the results of this paper, the government should improve the policy support system for waste classification, strengthen environmental protection-related policy publicity and knowledge popularization, stimulate the endogenous motivation of rural residents, narrow the regional environmental governance gap, and promote green and sustainable development in rural areas.

Carbon tax is an important economic instrument in achieving the goal of carbon emission reduction and sustainable development. This paper investigates the effects of carbon tax on carbon emission reduction in China. First, a non-competitive input-output table for Carbon Emissions of 28 sectors in China after Carbon Tax was established, based on the "2018 China Non-competitive Input-Output Table (42 Sectors)" and the carbon emission data of sectors provided by China Carbon Emission Accounts and Datasets (CEADs). Then, an input-output price model was established to study the changes on product price, GDP, employment, and carbon dioxide emissions of 28 sectors after carbon taxing ranged from 10 to 200. When the carbon tax rate reaches 200 yuan/ton, the inflation rate will be 5.907%, the total GDP will be decreased to 1.910%, the total labor force will be decreased to 1.744%, and the total carbon emission reduction rate will be increased to 8.171%. Results showed that with the increases in carbon tax, the inflation rate was increased, the rate of carbon emission reduction was increased, and the negative effects on GDP and employment were also increased. Suggestions on policy making, such as combination of carbon taxing and carbon trading, dynamic adjustment mechanism, tax neutrality, and forcing active carbon reduction, were proposed to minimize the adverse effect of levying carbon tax. The results from this paper would provide a reference for the policy making on carbon management.

With the aim of achieving the goal of ecological livability in Chinese rural society, the issue of rural environmental governance has received great attention from the CCP and the government. However, due to local governments' model of development in exchange for economic interests and the "urban and rural binary" structure of environmental governance, rural environmental governance faces many dilemmas, such as lack of normative standards, lack of environmental governance subjects, and lack of judicial security. In order to improve the development of rural ecological civilization and realize ecologically friendly agriculture, this paper proposes a solution path for rural environmental governance from the perspective of the idea of the community with a shared future for humanity. Specifically, this solution path includes establishing the concepts of cooperation and governance of environmental protection, improving villagers' participation in environmental protection, balancing economic and environmental interests in rural environmental governance, and building a long-term mechanism for the rule of law in rural environmental governance.

China's economic development has gradually entered a new period of slowing down and changing from quantity to quality, which has put forward higher requirements for environmental quality. How to better fulfill environmental responsibilities and realize a virtuous circle of "environmental protection for development" and a value growth model are essential issues that enterprises should consider and solve. Overconfidence, as one of the significant psychological characteristics of management, has caused more and more attention to its economic consequences. In order to clarify the internal logical relationship between the two and help enterprises optimize their environmental responsibility decisions, the paper is based on upper echelon theory and stakeholder theory. It focuses on the micro-situation of the corporate, empirically testing the influence of management overconfidence on corporate environmental responsibility by using the OLS regression analysis method, taking the manufacturing listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange of China from 2010 to 2017 as the research sample. The study discusses the moderating effect of government environmental governance and media attention on the relationship between management overconfidence and corporate environmental responsibility. The empirical results show a negative correlation between management overconfidence and corporate environmental responsibility. Both government environmental governance and media attention will weaken the negative correlation between management overconfidence and corporate environmental responsibility. Further research finds that management overconfidence has a weakening effect on corporate value, and corporate environmental responsibility plays a partial mediating role between management overconfidence and corporate value.

Based on a sample of 92 listed renewable energy enterprises in China from 2007-2017, this paper empirically examines the nonlinear effect of environmental policies on renewable energy investments using a semiparametric regression model. Environmental policies are divided into three groups in terms of pre-control, in-process governance, and post-accounting-the groups being green supervision and public regulations, green standardized regulations, and green accounting regulations-and this paper explores the differences in the effects of environmental policies at different stages. The results indicate that the relationship between environmental policies and renewable energy development has been unstable, following a "W-shaped" pattern. Green supervision and public regulations can greatly enhance investments in the renewable energy industry, with an estimated coefficient of 10.8173. Green standardized regulations have a similar "W-shaped" impact on renewable energy development. However, the nonlinear impact of green accounting regulations on renewable energy development fails the significance test. In addition, the effect of environmental policies on investment in the solar energy industry is positive, with a coefficient of 1.0697. The positive effect of environmental policies on investments in the renewable energy industry is reflected mainly in medium-, small-, and micro-sized enterprises. These findings contribute to the literature on the effectiveness of environmental policies by putting a set of environmental policies into a unified framework to explore their combined effects.

At present, China's economy is developing rapidly; however, at the same time, it is also bringing more and more serious environmental problems. Although many laws have been established in the country to limit pollution by enterprises-and enterprises are actively saving energy and reducing pollution-the situation is still not optimistic. In 2016, there were 35 cities across the country that exceeded the annual average air quality standard; these regions have been plagued by haze for a long time, which seriously threatens people's health and sustainable social and economic development. Therefore, while pursuing economic benefits and realizing greater value, importance must be attached to environmental performance, especially for enterprises with serious pollution. Using the panel regression analysis method, based on the data of enterprises from 2010 to 2019, this paper empirically analyzes the effects of government environmental protection subsidies and internal control quality on the environmental performance of heavily polluting enterprises, and verifies the nonlinear critical effect of government subsidies and internal control on environmental performance. In addition, this paper also uses the intermediate effect model to verify the mechanism by which environmental subsidies impact the environmental performance of heavily polluting enterprises. Through the empirical analysis, the effects of environmental protection subsidies and internal control on the environmental performance of enterprises with serious pollution are obtained. In the process of environmental subsidy affecting the environmental performance of heavy-polluting enterprises, internal control plays a key intermediary role. In addition, environmental subsidies and internal controls have a certain impact on the environmental performance of heavily polluting enterprises. Through the empirical analysis, it is concluded that there are obvious differences between government subsidies and internal control on the environmental governance effects of heavily polluting enterprises in different regions and with different property rights. Among them, the environmental protection subsidies have the greatest impact on pollution degree in the central region, followed by the eastern region; in the western region, it is not obvious. Secondly, the incentive effect of government environmental subsidies on state-owned enterprises with serious environmental pollution is better than the environmental governance effect of non-state-owned enterprises.

Digitization offers fresh impetus to the transformation and upgrading of mining enterprises, while on the other hand, the rapid development and broad application of digital technologies make the environmental governance of mining enterprises the most important themes of theoretical research and practical exploration. In this paper, A-share companies listed between 2007 and 2020 are taken as samples to study the influence of digital transformation on the environmental governance of mining enterprises, and its relative acting paths. Our main research methods are multiple linear regression analysis, the panel fixed-effect model and the intermediary effect model. The results show that digital transformation significantly improves the environmental governance of mining enterprises, which is still tenable even after going through a series of endogeneity and robustness tests. It is found via the path test that, by strengthening the supervision of the media, the digital transformation performed in mining enterprises helps improve their environmental governance level, but the comparability of the accounting data shows no significant mediation effect between digital transformation and environmental governance. The heterogeneity test found that the promotion of digital transformation in environmental governance was significant only in non-state-owned enterprises, large-scale enterprises, and mature-growth enterprises. The findings enrich studies on the economic consequences and the environmental governance influences brought by mining enterprise's transformation based on advanced technologies. This provides an important reference and is of great heuristic significance in promoting digital transformation and strengthening the environmental governance of mining enterprises.

In environmental authoritarian countries, environmental pollution control relies on government environmental regulation. Theoretically, the certainty and severity of environmental regulation are the key factors in achieving its political goals. According to regulatory space theory, an effective regulatory system needs regulatory power and resources. However, the effectiveness of regulation may be decreased by the desperate need for resources, and the regulated enterprises can also affect environmental regulation through their information advantage and social networks. This paper focuses on how local environmental regulation can be achieved under these conditions. The analysis is conducted from two perspectives: the deterrence effect of punishment and the political connections maintained by enterprises. An empirical test was conducted by analyzing the research data from the 12th China Private Enterprise Survey in 2016. The study found that the severity of punishment is a mediator of environmental regulation in the promotion of enterprises' investment in pollution control, and that it is moderated by the political relationships of enterprise managers. Compared with counterparts that have a less substantial political network, enterprises with more political networks may feel more pressure from environmental regulation policies, which leads to higher pollution fines. However, the promotion effect of environmental fines on an enterprise's investment in pollution control is weakened due to its political relationships, thus weakening the effectiveness of the punishment. This paper clarifies the mechanism through which political connections weaken the effect of environmental regulation: political connections encourage firms to avoid real harm and do false good. Regulation is supposed to use fines as an incentive to improve the environment, but politically connected companies are more willing to pay fines (doing false good), than to invest in cleaning up pollution (avoiding real harm).

To deal with the pollution issue caused by long-term economic development, China has introduced a number of environmental governance measures and made some progress. In the context of the strategy of developing a "Healthy China", the Chinese government proposed to include health in the formulation and implementation of environmental regulation policies, which places a higher demand on the implementation effect of environmental policies. This study attempts to clarify the causal link between market-based environmental governance and public health, and quantify the implementation effects of market-oriented environmental governance, so as to provide accurate assessments for addressing environmental degradation and improving public health. Based on the CHNS database and provincial panel data from 2000 to 2015, this paper constructs a binary logit-based difference-in-difference model to investigate the effects of the emission trading system (ETS) pilot policy on public health measured by the incidence of respiratory diseases, heart disease, and other diseases. The results show that ETS significantly reduces the incidence of respiratory and other diseases but has no significant impact on the incidence of heart diseases. The improvement effects of ETS on public health mainly come from the reduction of SO 2 under the principle of total volume control. However, heterogeneity analysis reveals that the health-improving effects of ETS are not as expected. Although ETS can enhance the health of vulnerable populations, such as workers near pollution sources and rural residents, it has no discernible impact on the health of those far from pollution sources and urban residents.

This paper took the panel data of 1052 heavily-polluting listed companies from both the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2017 to empirically analyze the impact of environmental regulation (ERG) on firm performance (FP). The article introduces a mediating effect model to test the mediating role of corporate tax burden (ETR) within the relationship between ERG on FP. The results showed that: (1) ERG has exerted a significant enhancement effect on the performance of heavily polluted firms via the ETR reduction mechanism. (2) The mediating effect of ETR depends on the duration of ERG. A significant time lag exists before the mediating effect starts to work, and the magnitude of the mediating effect increases with the time lag from the execution of the ERG. (3) The mediating effect of ETR varies significantly with the nature of corporate property rights. It is significant for the state-owned firms, while for non-state-owned firms, there is no evidence supporting the existence of the mediating effect of ETR despite ERG still having a significant direct-impact on FP. Based on these findings, we discuss the policy suggestion to optimize the impact of environmental regulation policies in terms of incentivizing the green development of polluting firms.

The green finance policy is crucial for enterprises to participate in environmental governance actively. Taking the "Green Credit Guidelines" issued by China in 2012 as a quasi-natural experiment, this study investigated the impact of green finance policies on corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance by using a continuous Difference-in-Differences (DID) model based on the data of listed companies from 2006 to 2020. The conclusions are: (1) The green finance policy significantly improves corporate ESG, but the effects vary across enterprises. (2) The policy has encouraged enterprises to develop and adopt green products and technologies. Still, it has not had a positive effect on the treatment of enterprise pollutant emissions because the implementation of the policy makes enterprises pay more attention to front-end risk control than pollution treatment after production. (3) Research results have heterogeneity. The impact of green finance policies on enterprises at different levels of environmental regulation is different. Enterprises in areas with high intensity of environmental regulation are more vulnerable to green credit. The conclusion of this paper helps improve the green finance policy system, enhance the awareness and level of corporate ESG, and strengthen the collaborative governance of policies and enterprises on environmental issues in combination with the mandatory environmental regulations and incentive mechanisms to promote the green development of enterprises and realize the goal of carbon neutrality.

To clarify the evolution of "production-living-ecological" function coupling in the Yellow River Basin, coordinating the spatial allocation of resources, development management and layout optimization, is an important means for achieving ecological protection and high-quality development in the region. In this paper, we conducted an empirical analysis and ARIMA prediction of the coupled production-living-ecological function coordination level in the Yellow River Basin of China from 2008 to 2018, and found that: (1) In terms of temporal evolution, the production-living-ecological function and coupling coordination level of each province and region in the Yellow River Basin generally shows a sharp and then slow upward trend, with the living functions changing more than the production and ecological functions; (2) in terms of spatial pattern, the production and living functions of each province and region show the trend of functional level increasing from east to west over time; the ecological functions, contrary to production and living functions, show a "high-low" aggregation, midstream shows "low-low" aggregation, and downstream shows "low-high" aggregation; (3) According to the regression results of the spatial Dubin model, the environmental governance level, technological research and development level, and social security level and resource dependence degree have positive promoting and spillover effects on the coupling coordination level of the "production-living-ecological" function in the region. However, population density and carbon emission intensity will hinder the development of regional coupling coordination level; (4) from the ARIMA prediction, the coupling coordination level of "production-living-ecological" in the Yellow River Basin continues the development trend of 2008-2018 in the short term, the overall coordination level is at a high level, and the variability of coupling coordination level among provinces and regions is further reduced. Finally, corresponding development countermeasures and suggestions are given to different provinces and regions based on the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics, influencing factors and development trend of the "production-living-ecological" function in the Yellow River basin.

The advancement of technology and economic development has raised the standard of living and at the same time brought a greater burden to the environment. Environmental governance has become a common concern around the world, and although China's environmental governance has achieved some success, it is still a long way from the ultimate goal. This paper empirically analyzes the impact of environmental publicity and education on environmental governance performance, using public participation as a mediator. The results show that: the direct effect of environmental publicity and education on environmental governance performance is not significant; environmental publicity and education have a significant positive effect on public participation; public participation significantly contributes to environmental governance performance; public participation shows a good mediating effect between environmental publicity and education and environmental governance performance. The government should adopt diversified environmental protection publicity and education in future environmental governance, and vigorously promote public participation in environmental governance so that the goal of environmental governance can be fundamentally accomplished by all people.

There is a close connection between export trade and environmental regulations. How to realize the green development of export trade under the constraint of environmental regulation policy is a controversial topic in both theoretical research and practice. Considering the leading role of Zhejiang export trade in China, based on the extended gravity model, this paper attempts to explore the impact of environmental regulations on export trade using the panel data of Zhejiang Province together with that of 18 major "Belt and Road" trading countries (regions) from 2004 to 2016. It provides a theoretical basis for promoting the coordinated development of environmental protection and export trade. This not only has theoretical and practical significance for various regions in China but also for other countries and regions in the world when formulating environmental regulation standards and implementation intensity. The empirical results show that there is a U-shaped relationship between environmental regulations and the development of export trade; namely, the former suppresses the latter before promotion happens. Specifically, environmental regulation could increase the cost of export products and curb the development of export trade in the short term. On the other hand, it encourages enterprises to carry out technological innovation and improve efficiency and competitiveness, thus contributing to the development of export trade in the long term.

China's carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) is an institutional arrangement that China intends to explore as a means of energy conservation and emission reduction. It is the core of China's goal of achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. This paper regards the introduction of pilot carbon emission trading policies as a quasi-natural experiment. Propensity Score Matching (PSM), Differences-in-Differences (DID), and spatial Durbin methods were used to evaluate the policy effects of pilot carbon emission trading policies on the carbon intensity of Chinese cities. We empirically tested the impact mechanism using the panel data of 281 cities at the prefecture level and above in China from 2006 to 2019. The results show that (1) the pilot policy of carbon emission trading has significantly reduced the carbon intensity of Chinese cities and shows characteristics of heterogeneity; (2) the dynamic effect test shows that the mitigation effect of the pilot carbon emission trading policy has increased gradually with time; (3) the mediation effect shows that the pilot carbon emission trading policy alleviates urban pollution in the region by improving the level of environmental governance and jointly reduces urban carbon intensity by increasing the level of green technology innovation; (4) the Durbin test suggests that pilot carbon emissions trading policy enforcement can significantly improve the carbon intensity of the area surrounding the city. In summary, the national carbon emissions trading market appears to be a successful experiment that also can contribute to China's sustainable development. Its promise in achieving the "double carbon" target provides important policy implications.

Green development is the core goal for contemporary urban areas. It has become essential to explore new types of urban green development, and the concept of the "national civilized city" which is the most influential city brand in China, has emerged. Drawing upon the administrative competing theory, based on the panel data of 281 cities in China from 2000 to 2018, this paper employs a propensity scores matching (PSM) design and a difference-in-difference (DID) approach to examine the influence of the establishment of the national civilized city policy on the green development of prefecture-level cities in China. First, the result shows that the establishment of the national civilized city policy can significantly improve the urban green total factor productivity (GTFP). Second, the mediation mechanism analyses show that the establishment of national civilized city policy can promote cities to increase their investment in R&D, increase the financial investment in environmental governance, and optimize the industrial structure, which further lays a solid foundation for urban green development. Third, the heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of civilized city construction on urban GTFP is different in terms of population and economic scales. The results show that the weight of environmental management and R&D investment should be increased in the evaluation index of the national civilized city, and the promotion of urban green development should be maximized.

Carbon emission abatement is very important for manufacturers regulated by environmental policies. However, choosing an optimal carbon abatement strategy is difficult for many firms. This paper attempts to explore the appropriate carbon abatement strategy for firms that are regulated by cap-and-trade. Specifically, by bringing remanufacturing into consideration, this paper examines a manufacturer that has four alternative carbon abatement strategies: (1) do nothing, (2) invest in carbon abatement, (3) engage in remanufacturing, or (4) become involved in investment and remanufacturing together. The models of these four strategies are first developed in a monopolistic operating environment. The results show that among the four carbon abatement strategies, although the fourth strategy has the highest costs, it generates the largest profits for the manufacturer, passes the greatest benefits along to consumers, and has the best environmental performance. Next, this study is extended to a competitive environment. The results show that the optimal strategy in the monopolistic environment no longer maximizes profits, and decision guidance is offered for the manufacturer operating under such an environment., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Facing the intensification of global carbon emissions and the increasingly severe pressure of environmental pollution, listed companies urgently need to promote green innovation, achieve green transformation, and alleviate environmental problems. Green finance policy has played a significant role as a financial strategy for environmental governance in affecting green innovation level over the years. In this context, taking the green finance reform and innovation pilot zone (GFRIPZ) implemented in 2017 in China as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper analyzes the impact of green finance policy on green innovation level of listed companies by the difference-in-difference model. Based on the data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2020, the results of empirical analysis show that green finance significantly promotes green innovation of listed companies. The effect is profound on green utility model patents, but less pronounced on green invention patents. Among all these pilot zones, the policy effects of GFRIPZ ranked in descending order are Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Guizhou, and Xinjiang. In addition, green finance has a more significant impact on heavy-polluting industries, large and state-owned enterprises, and listed companies located in the eastern region. Furthermore, the effects of industry heterogeneity ranked in descending order are energy, manufacturing, processing, and engineering industry, while it is not obvious in the service industry. Mechanism analysis suggests that the effect is driven by a reduction in the cost of debt financing and an increase in the long-term debt ratio. The findings provide implications for policymakers to promote the level of green innovation and environmental governance. Therefore, policymakers should support the long-term creative development of green invention patents by reducing the cost of debt financing and increasing the long-term debt ratio and consider the heterogeneous characteristics of listed companies when formulating green finance policies.

Promoting the carbon emission trading system has been a crucial measure for China to fulfill its carbon neutrality commitment. Taking the carbon emission trading system implemented in China in 2013 as a quasi-natural experiment, based on the provincial panel data of China from 2005 to 2019, this paper adopts the difference-in-difference (DID) method and the synthetic control method (SCM) to evaluate the impact of the carbon emission trading system on energy conservation and emission reduction in pilot provinces and cities. The research findings reveal that, on the whole, the carbon emission trading system has significantly promoted the process of energy conservation and emission reduction in pilot provinces and cities. Other robustness tests, including the parallel trend test, PSM-DID stationarity test and placebo test have also been passed. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the most significant policy effects occur in Tianjin and Shanghai, followed by Hubei. The emission reduction effect of Guangdong displays a trend of first decreasing and then increasing. The test results demonstrate that the carbon emission trading system can strengthen the process of energy conservation and emission reduction by optimizing the industrial structure and energy structure. In conclusion, policy makers should coordinate the relationship between the government and the market and speed up the transformation of environmental policy from command control type to market incentive type. Meanwhile, improve the property right system and accelerate the promotion of carbon emission trading pilot policies in China according to local conditions. By encouraging technological innovation, a new market-oriented path of energy conservation and emission reduction guided by the enhancement of energy efficiency and the optimization of energy and industrial structures ought to be formed.

Against the background of green and sustainable development strategy, it is an effective way to carry out green innovation to cope with the increasing intensity of government environmental regulation for enterprises. Nevertheless, the regulatory role of ESG performance has been ignored. Based on panel data from Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2019, this paper mainly studies whether the environmental regulation intensity and ESG performance have a substitution effect on the impact of green innovation by constructing a double fixed effect model. The empirical results showed that first, positive ESG performance is conducive to promoting green innovation. Second, there is a U-shaped relationship between the intensity of environmental regulation and high-quality green innovation, which reflects the effect of "offset before compensation". With the increasing intensity of environmental regulation, high-quality green innovation tends to crowd out low-quality green innovation, which further improves the practical test of the "Porter Hypothesis". Third, the positive ESG performance showed a negative regulatory effect between environmental regulation intensity and enterprise green innovation, which means that environmental regulation intensity and ESG performance have a substitution effect, and the effect is heterogeneous in different enterprises. This paper makes a beneficial exploration on how environmental regulation intensity and ESG performance affect enterprise green innovation, and demonstrates the regulatory role of ESG performance between environmental regulation intensity and green innovation, which reveals the impact of macro environmental policies on the green innovation behavior of micro subjects, and contributes to the further improvement of ESG concept and green innovation theory.

Fiscal decentralization (FD), as an institutional arrangement for the fiscal division between central and local governments, gives local governments the enthusiasm and autonomy to provide public products and services. With the dominance of environmental governance, how local governments can avoid intergovernmental "race to the bottom" issues through green technology innovation (GTI) is a matter of regional green development and continuous improvement of atmospheric environmental quality. Based on a sample of 30 provinces in China from 2003 to 2018, this paper uses the spatial Durbin model (SDM) to examine the relationship between FD, GTI, and regional air pollution and explores their spatial spillover effect and regional heterogeneity from the perspective of intergovernmental competition. The results indicate that the FD and GTI in various provinces had significant and regionally differentiated inhibitory effects on local air pollution. In Western China, due to the regional competition among local governments in terms of economic development, economic development-oriented fiscal expenditures crowd out environmental governance-oriented fiscal expenditures, which has led to the consequence that FD can intensify local air pollution and has a positive spillover effect, but the demonstration effect of green technological innovation can well moderate the effect of FD on air pollution. FD in the eastern region has played a positive role in promoting regional air quality improvement. However, its green technological innovation has not played a positive role in reducing emissions, and it plays a significant negative regulatory role in the emission reduction effect led by FD. Finally, the article puts forward policy recommendations in terms of a fiscal decentralization system, green technological innovation, and performance evaluation mechanism.

Pharmaceutical products, including active pharmaceutical ingredients and inactive ingredients such as packaging materials, have raised significant concerns due to their persistent input and potential threats to human and environmental health. Discourse on reducing pharmaceutical waste and subsequent pollution is often limited, as information about the toxicity of pharmaceuticals in humans is yet to be fully established. Nevertheless, there is growing awareness about ecotoxicity, and efforts to curb pharmaceutical pollution in the European Union (EU), United States (US), and Canada have emerged along with waste disposal and treatment procedures, as well as growing concerns about impacts on human and animal health, such as through antimicrobial resistance. Yet, the outcomes of such endeavors are often disparate and involve multiple agencies, organizations, and departments with little evidence of cooperation, collaboration, or oversight. Environmental health disparities occur when communities exposed to a combination of poor environmental quality and social inequities experience more sickness and disease than wealthier, less polluted communities. In this paper, we discuss pharmaceutical environmental pollution in the context of health disparities and examine policies across the US, EU, and Canada in minimizing environmental pollution.

Concern has been expressed in many parts of the world that community relations in rural areas are breaking down, making issues such as rural environmental degradation harder to resolve without external regulation. Guanxi is a specific Chinese idiom for characterizing social networks, as a broad term to represent existing relations among people, which can be loosely translated as ''relationship''. Based on a case study of an underdeveloped mountainous area of Southern China, this paper examined the problem from the perspective of guanxi, and explored the impacts of internal group differentiation catalyzed by pig farming pollution and the subsequent influences on the distribution of costs and benefits of different shareholders. It was found that the guanxi in the village were changed from blood relationship centered to economic interest centered. This disparity exerts a significant influence on the distribution of costs and benefits of pollution control and exacerbates environmental inequalities. This means that pig farmers dominated the narrative of pig farming pollution, while the ordinary villagers chose to suffer without protesting, which hinders the advancement of pollution control, and pig farmers took the benefits of weak pollution control and managed to transfer the external cost to others, while others became direct victims. The paper concludes that the rich become richer and the poor become poorer in both economic and environmental perspectives. It is strongly suggested that guanxi should be integrated into the consideration and decision-making process of rural environmental governance in order to guarantee the efficiency and efficacy of its implementation.

Taking 286 cities above the prefecture level in China as the research object and the research period from 2003 to 2019, through the two-way fixed effect model, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of the city level on environmental collaborative governance. The threshold regression model is used to reveal the nonlinear relationship between urban levels and environmental collaborative governance and to analyze the phase characteristics of different urban levels for environmental collaborative governance. The results show that: (1) The city level has a significant role in promoting collaborative environmental governance. (2) The regression results of the three major sections show that the urban level promotion in the eastern region has the strongest promoting effect on the coordinated environmental governance, and the western region is the weakest. (3) The impact of the city level on collaborative environmental governance is nonlinear. When the city scale reaches a certain critical point, its impact on the collaborative environmental governance tends to intensify.

To answer to global climate change, promote climate governance and map out a grand blueprint for sustainable development, carbon neutrality has become the target and vision of all countries. Green finance is a means to coordinate economic development and environmental governance. This paper mainly studies the trend of carbon emission reduction in China in the next 40 years under the influence of green finance development and how to develop and improve China's green finance system to help China achieve the goal of "carbon neutrality by 2060". The research process and conclusions are as follows: (1) Through correlation test and data analysis, it is concluded that the development of green finance is an important driving force to achieve carbon neutrality. (2) The grey prediction GM (1,1) model is used to forecast the data of carbon dioxide emissions, green credit balance, green bond issuance scale and green project investment in China from 2020 to 2060. The results show that they will all increase year by year in the next 40 years. (3) BP neural network model is used to further predict carbon dioxide emissions from 2020 to 2060. It is expected that China's CO 2 emissions will show an "inverted V" trend in the next 40 years, and China is expected to achieve a carbon peak in 2032 and be carbon neutral in 2063. Based on the results of the research above, this paper provides a supported path of implementing the realization of the carbon-neutral target of China from the perspective of developing and improving green financial system, aiming to provide references for China to realize the vision of carbon neutrality, providing policy suggestions for relevant departments, and provide ideas for other countries to accelerate the realization of carbon neutrality.

This paper employs the global Malmquist Luenberger (GML) index and the System Generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method to investigate the influence of both environmental regulation and financial development on green total factor productivity in 41 cities of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in China from 2003-2019. We select the relevant input-output data to measure the green total factor productivity (GTFP) and its decomposition index including undesirable output. The results show that the GTFP and its decomposition index in the YRD have a slow fluctuating upward trend. The YRD mainly depends on improving the level of technological progress and environmental governance to promote the improvement of regional economic green development level. The empirical research results show that there is an inverted U relationship between environmental regulation and GTFP in the YRD, too strict environmental regulation will inhibit the growth of green total factor productivity. By adding control variables, the inflection point of environmental regulation is 0.5034, which is lower than that without control variables. There is a strong interaction and superposition effect between financial development and environmental regulation, which is closely related to the established financial cooperation mechanism, perfect financial system arrangement and cross-regional financial cooperation platform in the YRD. Government intervention should be reduced, the introduction of foreign capital should be controlled appropriately, foreign capital should be guided to green industries, and the use efficiency of foreign capital should be improved. This paper holds that we should pay attention to the strength of environmental regulation, prevent overcorrection, increase the guidance of credit funds, deepen the reform of the financial system, appropriately intervene in the market by the government, strengthen the guidance of foreign capital, and promote the development and transformation of the green economy in the YRD region with the help of several policies.

As the continuous changes in environmental regulations have a non-negligible impact on the innovation activities of micro subjects, and economic policy uncertainty has become one of the important influencing factors to be considered in the development of enterprises. Therefore, based on the panel data of Chinese high-tech enterprises from 2012-2017, this paper explores the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulations on firms' green innovation from the perspective of economic policy uncertainty as a moderating variable. The empirical results show that, first, market-incentivized environmental regulation instruments have an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation output, while voluntary environmental regulation produces a significant positive impact. Second, the U-shaped relationship between market-based environmental regulation and innovation output becomes more pronounced when economic policy uncertainty is high. However, it plays a negative moderating role in regulating the relationship between voluntary-based environmental regulation and innovation output. This paper not only illustrates the process of technological innovation by revealing the intrinsic mechanism of environmental regulation on firm innovation, but also provides insights for government in environmental governance from the perspective of economic policy uncertainty as well.

It is the scientific way to promote the transformation and optimization of an industrial structure to promote the improvement of its green total factor productivity ( GTFP ) by formulating environmental regulation policies. Based on the GTFP panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2004 to 2017, this paper takes the "Air Pollution Control and Prevention Action Plan" (APCP Action Plan) as the proxy dummy variable of environmental regulation, and uses the difference-in-differences (DID) model to explore the impact of the implementation of the APCP Action Plan on GTFP . In addition, by constructing the industrial structure optimization index, this paper analyzes how the APCP Action Plan policy affects GTFP through the transformation and optimization of industrial structure. The following basic conclusions are obtained: First, environmental regulation policies like the APCP Action Plan can improve GTFP . Second, the APCP Action Plan has regional heterogeneity in promoting GTFP in different regions. The policy only significantly affects the GTFP in the Pearl River Delta region in southern China. Third, the "quantity" and "quality" of the optimization of industrial structure will weaken the promoting effect of the APCP Action Plan on GTFP . In contrast, the rationalization of industrial structure will aggravate this promoting effect.

The Yangtze River Basin (YRB) is an important area for China's economic development and environmental governance. The aim of this paper is to analyze the total factor productivity across 97 cities in the YRB from 2005 to 2016. Based on the input and output indicators from 2005 to 2016, this paper selects the SE-SBM model to measure the environmental regulation efficiency (ERE) of 97 cities in the YRB and then uses the DEA-Malmquist index to measure the total factor productivity of the region. Results suggest that the overall ERE in the YRB is weakly ineffective, while ERE in the central and eastern coastal areas is relatively high. ERE matches the economic foundation and development of the city. YRB environmental regulation efficiency was in descending order in the middle stream, upstream, and downstream. The efficiency of regional environmental regulation shows an N-type development trend, with obvious characteristics of phased development. Moreover, the total factor productivity of the YRB has shown a downward trend. The scale efficiency index and the technical efficiency index have positively boosted the total factor productivity, while the technological progress index has dragged down the total factor productivity of the area. The contribution to the total factor productivity index is in order of scale efficiency, technological progress index, and technological efficiency index in the downstream. The overall inputs and outputs of the YRB have great development potential. The inputs have not been fully utilized, the outputs have not been maximized, and the regional differentiation is significantly observable.

Under the guidance of modern environmental governance concepts, there have been profound changes in the subject, structure, and operational mechanism of the modern marine environmental governance in China. This paper first classifies the subjects of modern marine environmental governance in China, as well as their relationships; analyses the structural characteristics from the three levels of rights, society, and region; explores the operational mechanism; and builds the framework of the modern marine environmental governance system in China. Both the central and local governments act as the leaders of the modern marine environmental governance system in China, and there have been many new changes in their relationships. On the one hand, the interest and goals of the central and local governments have gradually converged under the pressure system. On the other hand, local governments follow the principles of comprehensive governance regarding the coastline and collaborative cooperation is gradually beginning to occur. Different governance subjects are interrelated and intertwined to form a complete modern marine environmental governance structure, which includes the following three levels: the governmental power structure; the social structure, which involves collaboration between multiple entities; and the regional structure, which involves land-sea coordination in environmental governance. These structures each play their parts in the overall process of the marine environmental governance's institutional arrangements, process coordination, and feedback adjustments and ultimately constitute a dynamic and complete modern marine environmental governance operational system.

As municipal solid waste severely threatens human health and the ecological environment, since 2019, China has started to fully practice MSW sorting in all prefecture-level cities. In this paper, we apply the event study and difference-in-difference methods to investigate how China's green policy of promoting MSW sorting influences listed waste sorting companies from the perspective of investors' short-term and long-term reactions. This paper finds that investors are not sensitive to the introduction of MSW sorting in the short term, the new environmental policy does not relieve the financing constraints of related enterprises in the long run, and the financing constraints of private enterprises are stricter than those of state-owned enterprises. These findings indicate that China's current encouragement of garbage sorting is not efficient enough as it has not brought benefits to the waste classification industry yet. More measures need to be taken to eliminate uncertainties in urban waste sorting. Our paper enriches the research on China's waste sorting practices and provides new evidence of the effects of environmental policy on related firms from the perspective of green industry.

The rapid growth of China's renewable energy market and production capacity has attracted worldwide attention. Environmental policy integration in the energy sector and the institutional background behind this growth have seen little examination. In this paper, we present an assessment of environmental policy integration (EPI), attempting to reveal how the institutional factors facilitate EPI in the energy sector of China. A qualitative analytical framework involving normative, organizational, and procedural dimensions, incorporating multiple pieces of quantitative evidence, was applied. The results show that an ambitious and long-term normative vision covering political will, social backing, and cultural foundation in China is indispensable to the EPI process in the energy sector. The energy agency's trans-sector cooperation in policy-making has been established to overcome the sectoral compartmentalization. China's EPI in energy has a relatively complete and stable regulating system but, at the same time, it is expected to obtain more benefits from market cultivation and public participation. In this process, advantages such as the co-evolution of the green energy innovation, market, and society do exist; however, this market-oriented approach may bring the risk of economic and societal disturbances when interest-driven production capacity growth far surpasses market and societal requirements. This potential risk needs to be handled and prevented by strong governmental guidance and support. The continuous ambitious and long-term visioning of EPI, sufficient governmental funds, and a proactive industrial plan for renewable energy, are suggested.

This paper uses both fiscal expenditure policy and fiscal revenue policy as input indicators and selects environmental pollution control results reflecting different forms and sources of pollution as output indicators. The efficiency of fiscal policies for environmental pollution control (EFPE) of 30 provincial-level administrative divisions in China from 2007 to 2017 is measured by adopting the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method. Then, the spatial effect of fiscal decentralization on EFPE is empirically analyzed by using the spatial lag model (SLM). The results show that EFPE values in China have been greatly improved overall since 2014. The change in technical efficiency (TE) is caused mainly by the change in pure technical efficiency (PTE). EFPE values have regional heterogeneity and convergence. The eastern region has clearly higher EFPE values than other regions. The growth rate of the low efficient region is greater than that of the high efficient region. Fiscal expenditure decentralization has a direct negative effect and spatial spillover effect on EFPE values, while fiscal revenue decentralization has a non-significant effect. Based on these results, this paper proposes the following policy implications: increasing the level of fiscal expenditure of environmental pollution control and improving the central transfer payment system for environmental protection; reforming the government performance assessment system and innovating the conditions of government expenditure on environmental pollution control; and promoting horizontal fiscal cooperation in cross-regional environmental governance., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

A central-local dual governance system is the basic system of environmental governance in China. Co-governance between the central environmental protection department (CEPD) and local environmental protection departments (LEPDs) is an important means to effectively promote China's carbon emission reduction strategy. Accordingly, this paper discusses their interactive decision-making and investigates how to optimize the strategic relationships between the CEPD, LEPDs, and carbon emission enterprises (CEEs) under the dual governance system by constructing a trilateral evolutionary game model and analyzing evolutionary stability strategies, achieving a numerical experiment simulation of evolution processes and determining the impacts of various factors using MATLAB, leading to several countermeasures and suggestions. The results indicate that the CEPD should rationally use the incentive mechanism for LEPDs, improve the carbon tax system, and further penalize the nepotistic relationship of LEPDs and CEEs. Furthermore, it is essential to reform the current LEPD performance evaluation system and reduce the cost of LEPD positive regulation through subsidies and financial transfer payments. Additionally, the CEE strategy is affected by carbon reduction tax rates, penalties, subsides, and emission reduction costs and revenues. This study reveals the consequences of interactions between CEPD, LEPDs, and CEEs and presents options for the redesign of incentive and regulatory mechanisms to improve carbon emission reduction performance in China.

Taking China's SO 2 emissions trading pilot (ETP) in 2007, a large-scale market-based environmental regulation as its target, this paper reexamines the strong Porter hypothesis by adopting the method of propensity score matching-differences-in-differences. Research shows the following results: first, SO 2 ETP which provides high flexibility for enterprises in the process of emission reduction, improves total factor productivity (TFP) significantly on the whole. Second, the productivity effect of market-based environmental regulation varies from the productivity level of enterprise. For example, the SO 2 ETP has a significant effect on TFP only at 40-80 percent quantile of TFP, and the effect increases at first and then decreases. Third, the financing constraints and bargaining power of enterprises have significant negative moderating effects on the impact of SO 2 ETP on TFP, and the moderating effects between state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises exist heterogeneity. In conclusion, it provides reference for the formulation of market-type environmental regulations and the realization of high-quality development for developing countries.

To address the concern of environmental pollution, it is necessary to study the effect of environmental regulation on industrial solid waste emission reduction in China. This paper aimed to analyze the effectiveness of provincial environmental regulation (both formal and informal) on the industrial solid waste emission reduction. The results show that both the effect of formal and informal environmental regulations on industrial solid waste emission intensity present an inverted "U" shape. The threshold value of per capita GDP as an indicator variable is CNY 16,299 and CNY 15,572 respectively. The effect on pollution emission reduction will appear when the value is higher than the threshold, and the two-way transmission mechanism between formal and informal environmental regulations does exist. When GDP per capita exceeds CNY 27,961, there is a phenomenon of "rebound" in the effect of informal environmental regulation on pollution reduction. Based on the findings, it was suggested that both formal and informal environmental regulation should be promoted to achieve the goal of industrial solid waste emission reduction. The coordination between formal and informal environmental regulation should be considered when the government makes policies. Different environmental regulation policies should be implemented in different regions. Informal regulation should be enriched and further promoted. Environmental law should play an important role in maintaining the public's participation in environmental regulation to prevent the failure of informal environmental regulation.

A common argument is that the comprehensive implementation of the river chief system (RCS) is a clear indication of the Chinese government's strong commitment to overcoming the problem of water pollution. Scant attention, nonetheless, has been afforded to systematically examining the economic and social effects of this pioneering policy. Based on news reports and data from regions in which the RCS was piloted, this paper fills in a critical literature gap by unpacking the environmental, economic, and societal benefits accrued from this river-based management approach. Specifically, by employing a difference-in-differences (DID) method, this study shows that (1) overall, the adoption of the RCS has significantly reduced the discharge of sewage per unit of GDP and improved water quality to a considerable extent; (2) the RCS, functioning under China's top-down bureaucratic structure, coupled with increasing encouragement of bottom-up oversight and citizen participation, has provided local governments with strong incentives to improve water quality in a timely manner in their respective jurisdictions through the introduction of a plethora of measures, ranging from increased investment in wastewater treatment to faithful enforcement of environmental regulations; (3) the positive changes anticipated as a result of the RCS cannot be materialized in regions that have difficulties sustaining economic growth or facilitating cross-boundary policy coordination; and (4) the long-term effectiveness of the RCS is based on its ability to compel local enterprises to innovate their modes of operation, ultimately leading to regional industrial upgrading. The paper concludes by discussing how these empirical findings can help policymakers devise feasible tactics for confronting the causes of China's current environmental predicament in the context of improving the alignment of individual officials' political aspirations with targeted environmental outcomes.

As industrialization and urbanization in China have significantly increased ecological problems such as environmental pollution and resource waste, it has become important to be able to comprehensively assess ecological wellbeing performance (EWP) when seeking high-quality human wellbeing and economic growth within specific ecological limits. Therefore, to explore the EWP spatial and temporal distribution characteristics, this paper established an evaluation index system that considers ecological economic efficiency and economic welfare efficiency from input and output perspectives. The EWPs in 30 Chinese provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) from 2006 to 2017 were then measured using a two-stage super-efficiency slacks-based model (Super-SBM) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) window analysis method. It was found that: (1) the average EWP value in the Chinese provinces was relatively low at 0.698, with the highest EWP in Beijing, Hainan, and Shanghai and the lowest in Xinjiang, Ningxia, and Qinghai; (2) the average provincial EWP fluctuated from 2006 to 2017 with a "decline-rise-decline-rise" feature; (3) China's EWP value was spatially supported by the quadrangular "Beijing-Shanghai-Hainan-Sichuan" pole and continued to radiate to areas along these lines. These research findings provide theoretical insights and practical implications for regional ecological protection and human welfare improvements in China.

Waste sorting is the cardinal measurement to solve the problem of low efficiency of rural environmental governance and to alleviate environmental pollution by reduction, recycling, and harmlessness in rural areas. However, non-excludable and non-rival features of public goods easily cause a wide free-rider problem, which results in a low frequency of participation in the waste sorting of rural people. Based on the theory of the utility maximization of the rational economic man, this paper investigates survey data of 688 farm households in three cities and three counties of Shaanxi Province to explore the effect of the perceived value on the household waste classification behavior based on cost-benefit analysis. The results show that perceived benefit and perceived cost are important perceived value factors affecting farmers' participation in waste sorting. Specifically, the spiritual benefit of the perceived benefit has a significantly positive impact on classification behavior, while the time cost, physical cost, and material cost of the perceived cost have a negative impact on waste classification behavior. Further study of the heterogeneity of income impact shows that time cost only has a significant impact on the high-income group of farmers' classification behavior, while spiritual benefit and learning cost only affect the low-income group of farmers' waste classification behavior. Material cost has different influence directions on high- and low-income groups. In view of the aforementioned findings, this study highlights corresponding policy implications from the perspective of perceived benefit and perceived cost., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Scientific determination of energy and environmental efficiency and productivity is the key foundation of green development policy-making. The hyperbolic distance function (HDF) model can deal with both desirable output and undesirable output asymmetrically, and measure efficiency from the perspective of "increasing production and reducing pollution". In this paper, a nonparametric linear estimation method of an HDF model including uncontrollable index and undesirable output is proposed. Under the framework of global reference, the changes of energy environmental efficiency and productivity and their factorization of 107 resource-based cities in China from 2003 to 2018 are calculated and analyzed. With the classification of resource-based cities by resource dependence (RD) and region, we discuss the feature in green development quality of those cities. The results show that: (1) On the whole, the average annual growth rate of energy and environmental productivity of resource-based cities in China is 2.6%, which is mainly due to technological changes. The backward of relative technological efficiency hinders the further growth of productivity, while the scale diseconomy is the main reason for the backward of relative technological efficiency. (2) For the classification of RD, the energy and environmental efficiency of the high-dependent group are significantly lower than the other two, and the growth of productivity of the medium-dependent group is the highest. (3) In terms of classification by region, the energy and environmental efficiency of the eastern region is the highest, and that of the middle and western regions is not as good as that of the eastern and northeastern regions. The middle region shows the situation of "middle collapse" in both static efficiency and dynamic productivity change, and the main reason for its low productivity growth is the retreat of relatively pure technical efficiency. This conclusion provides practical reference for the classification and implementation of regional energy and environmental policies., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

The science on the effects of global climate change and air pollution on morbidity and mortality is clear and debate now centres around the scale and precise contributions of particular pollutants. Sufficient data existed in recent decades to support the adoption of precautionary public health policies relating to fossil fuels including shale exploration. Yet air quality and related public health impacts linked to ethical and environmental justice elements are often marginalized or missing in planning and associated decision making. Industry and government policies and practices, laws and planning regulations lagged well behind the science in the United Kingdom. This paper explores the reasons for this and what shaped some of those policies. Why did shale gas policies in England fail to fully address public health priorities and neglect ethical and environmental justice concerns. To answer this question, an interdisciplinary analysis is needed informed by a theoretical framework of how air pollution and climate change are largely discounted in the complex realpolitik of policy and regulation for shale gas development in England. Sources, including official government, regulatory and planning documents, as well as industry and scientific publications are examined and benchmarked against the science and ethical and environmental justice criteria. Further, our typology illustrates how the process works drawing on an analysis of official policy documents and statements on planning and regulatory oversight of shale exploration in England, and material from industry and their consultants relating to proposed shale oil and gas development. Currently the oil, gas and chemical industries in England continue to dominate and influence energy and feedstock-related policy making to the detriment of ethical and environmental justice decision making with significant consequences for public health.

This paper aims to examine the changing factors underlying China's environmental governance, by investigating the long-term dynamic impacts of related endogenous and exogenous factors and considering regional differences in these factors. The study estimated environmental regulation intensity and employed the geographical detector technique to analyze its driving factors, based on 21 prefecture-level cities in Guangdong Province, China, from 1990 to 2016. The results showed that environmental regulation intensity has increased in Guangdong Province over the past 27 years. The results also indicated that local environmental governance was affected by global-local interactions and changed based on different regional developmental phases. At first, factors within a region affected local environmental policies more significantly, such as economic development and urbanization. However, in the long run, globalization's impacts have been the most important factors influencing environmental governance. Further analysis showed that environmental regulation intensity in Guangdong Province's different regions was affected by different driven factors. Our analyses contribute to the understanding of China's environmental governance and have policy implications for environmental problem management and China's construction of an ecological civilization., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Green development is an important way to meet the challenges of ecological and environmental protection and economic growth, as well as an inevitable choice to realize China's sustainable development in the new era. The Chinese economic system is such that local government competition has become a key factor affecting regional green development under the current leadership. Based on the inter-provincial panel data of 30 provinces in mainland China from 1997 to 2017, this paper uses the total-factor non-radial directional distance function and slack-based measure data envelopment analysis (SBM-DEA) to measure the green development efficiency of the provinces. Additionally, it also uses the Malmquist-Luenberger (ML) index to decompose green development efficiency and analyzes its internal driving factors. Finally, taking environmental regulation as a mediating variable, this paper empirically analyzes the influence mechanism of local government competition on green development efficiency from three perspectives including growth competition, fiscal competition and investment competition. The study found that: the green development efficiency of Chinese regions showed a downward trend, with significant regional differences; technological progress is the key factor to improve the efficiency of green development, and its role gradually decreases from eastern to western and central regions; pure technical efficiency has become a bottleneck restricting the improvement of green development efficiency, while scale efficiency shows significant regional differences; the growth competition, fiscal competition and investment competition of local government all have a significant inhibitory effect on the efficiency of green development. This paper puts forward policy suggestions supporting enterprise technology research and development, optimizing energy conservation and emission reduction as well as improving the local government performance evaluation system for green development.

This paper first portrays the equilibrium payoff of enterprise's cooperation of environmental governance based on the Cournot model. Secondly, the evolutionary game model in complex networks is adopted to depict the evolution of environmental governance cooperative behavior among enterprises. Further, the evolutionary process of environmental governance cooperative behavior of enterprises is simulated considering the supervision behavior of government and the reputation evaluation behavior of environmental social organization. The results show that the cooperation level of enterprise group under self-organization condition will reach a low level; the supervision of government can enhance the cooperation level of enterprise group with high betrayal tempatation while it has limited effect on enterprise group with low betrayal tempatation. The reputation evaluation behavior of environmental social organization can realize reputation effect to improve the the cooperation level of enterprise group with high betrayal tempatation. The enhance of reputation sensitivity can optimize equilibrium distribution of reputation and it can strengthen the reputation effect on cooperation level. Based on the analysis above, the suggestions to effectively improve cooperation level are given., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.