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Environmental protection supervision is an important manifestation of ecological accountability system reform. Taking the implementation of China's central environmental protection inspection (CEPI) policy as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper applies the time-varying difference-in-difference (DID) model to identify the impact of the CEPI policy on the likelihood of enterprises' environmental violations. The main conclusions include: (1) the implementation of CEPI policy is conducive to inhibiting environmental violations. After a series of robustness tests, including the parallel trend test, the placebo test, the exclusion of policy interference, and the replacement of explained variables, the result remains robust. In terms of dynamic perspective, there is a lag in the impact of CEPI policy on enterprises' environmental violations. (2) The effect of CEPI policy is more prominent on samples of large enterprises, enterprises with highly concentrated equity, enterprises that polluted heavily, enterprises owned by executives with a political background, and enterprises that are situated in regions with higher level of marketization and more developed information infrastructure. (3) The CEPI policy can restrain the environmental violations of enterprises by a dual mechanism of releasing punishment and deterrence signals from the external governance, and forcing enterprises to enhance environmental management system from the internal governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructing a quasi-natural experiment based on China's National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone (NIDZ) pilot, this study applies the time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) model to estimate the impact of innovation-driven development on urban carbon emission reduction. We use panel data on 285 cities which covers 95.96% of Chinese cities during the period of 2003 to 2017. Compared with non-pilot cities, our results indicate that total carbon dioxide emissions and emission intensity of pilot cities decreased by 4.8% and 5.8%, respectively. The results suggest that the construction of NIDZs can significantly promote urban carbon emission reductions. Moreover, our mechanism tests indicate that this pilot policy can encourage technological innovation and optimize industrial structure, which in turn suppresses urban carbon dioxide emissions. Additionally, further analysis shows that the policy effect increases over years and is stronger in urban areas with higher levels of human capital, government finance, and information infrastructure. This study enriches the relevant research on carbon emission reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To optimize the accessibility algorithm and quantify the potential relationship between human development index and traffic comprehensive accessibility system, this paper analyzed the spatial distribution pattern of urban accessibility and human development index of highway, railway, and aviation transportation systems using data on highway, railway, and aviation schedules based on GIS spatial analysis method. Furthermore, the coupling degree between human development index and accessibility and its influence mechanism on the city level in China were explored based on the super-efficiency data envelopment analysis model. Results showed as follows: (1) Spatial distribution of human development index from high to low was gradually changing from east to west. The spatial distribution of urban accessibility of the three traffic systems had an evident "Hu Huanyong Line" effect. (2) The coordination degree of urban accessibility and human development index spread in a ladder mode. High coordination of cities in North and East China and the central Yangtze River region forms the spatial distribution of urban development circles connecting an urban development belt. (3) Railway connectivity and control value were highly sensitive to human development index in cities where serious imbalance between accessibility and human development index. Highway connectivity and control value were highly sensitive to human development index in cities where high coordination between accessibility and human development index. The results would provide scientific references for spatial planning of transportation, economic, and social development of cities and coordinated development of urban agglomeration in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on expectancy valence theory, people's behavior is affected by their self-perception and the external environment. In rural China, policy instruments as robust external environment factors have a strong effect on waste separation behavior (WSB). The purpose of the paper is to explore the influencing mechanism of policy instruments (infrastructure and information) on perceived value (perceived benefit and perceived cost) and waste separation behaviors. The data were collected from 689 rural households of Shaanxi province in China, and analyzed by using structural equation model (SEM). According to the results, the mediation effect proves that policy instruments not only can affect WSB directly but also can affect it indirectly through the perceived value. Specifically, information and infrastructure influence the perceived benefit positively and the perceived cost negatively, and information and infrastructure have an indirect effect on WSB through the mediation effect of the perceived cost. Second, policy instruments have a stronger effect on rural people's waste separation behavior than perceived value. Specifically, infrastructure has the most important impact on waste separation behavior, followed by information and then perceived cost. Third, the perceived cost is significantly negatively related to WSB, and perceived benefit has a positive effect but is statistically insignificant. It has a practical implication for the government. Providing sufficient infrastructure and launching effective information activities could improve the perceived benefit including biospheric, egoistic, social-altruistic, and reputation; and reduce the perceived cost of time, physical, learning, and money, which could then induce rural households to engage in WSB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of information infrastructure as well as the transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure are among the major challenges for the Chinese economy. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore how information infrastructure affects the upgrading of industrial structure. Based on the panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2013 to 2020, mediating effect model and non-parametric percentile bootstrap method are used to carry out empirical research, by creating an information infrastructure construction level and industrial structure upgrading indicators. The results show that, in addition to the direct effect of information infrastructure on industrial structure upgrading, information infrastructure can also work indirectly through three paths: (1) information infrastructure acts on industrial structure upgrading by enhancing urbanization level; (2) information infrastructure affects industrial structure upgrading by boosting technological innovation; (3) information infrastructure first enhances urbanization level, then acts on technological innovation, and finally promotes industrial structure upgrading. In addition, the intermediary effect of technological innovation is stronger than urbanization. In general, this study acknowledges that urbanization and technological innovation are partial mediators in the process of information infrastructure affecting industrial structure upgrading, notwithstanding other potential impact pathways being studied further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's economic growth over the past two decades has led to severe environmental pollution in most of its cities. To address this issue, China has developed and implemented several strategies to increase its resource utilization efficiency and move towards a green production economy, such as the information infrastructure construction policy (IICP). To assess the extent to which green production is being achieved, this study first measured the green total factor productivity (GTFP) in Chinese prefecture-level cities using a combined super slacks-based measure and the global Malmquist-Luenberger index (SBM-GML) model. Then, to assess the effectiveness of the IICP, the paths affecting the GTFP were explored using a time-varying difference-in-difference (time-varying DID) model. It was found that the IICP had significantly contributed to urban GTFP through its green technology diffusion effects and improved employment structures, with its implementation resulting in an average increase of 0.201 in the pilot cities compared to the non-pilot cities. This research attempted to explain how IICP plays a role in improving green production, and policy makers should attach importance to the power of IICP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities, research institutes, and firms are the main entities in the national innovation system. Owing to the heterogeneity of their outputs, prior studies have focused on their independent efficiency evaluation. This study adopts the nonhomogeneous data envelopment analysis model to assess the efficiency of three innovation entities in 30 provinces in China on a common platform. Results show that firms have the highest efficiency, and research institutes have the lowest efficiency. Innovation entities perform poorly due to the inefficiency of their subunits. Additionally, the 30 provinces are divided into three clusters by using the hierarchical clustering method. Moreover, Tobit regressions are used to estimate the impact of five environmental factors on the innovation efficiency of the three entities. The regression results show that the more open the region, the stronger the positive impact on the innovation efficiency of research institutes and firms. The regional economic environment has different degrees of negative impact on the three innovation entities. The direction and intensity of the impact of education input, government support, and information infrastructure on the three entities exhibit a large dispersion. The results provide important information for improving the efficiency of innovation entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The taxonomic, spatial and temporal biases in digital accessible knowledge (DAK) are important considerations for macroecological research, effective biological conservation and the sustainable use of biological resources. Here, for the first time, we quantify the gaps in bird data in China and determine the effectiveness of national datasets in complementing the large authoritative data portal at the national scale in terms of taxonomic, geographical, temporal, zoogeographical and ecoregional coverage. In this study, we integrated more than 2.5 million bird occurrence records in China from three main data portals, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the BirdReport (BR) and three sub-platforms containing information on bird specimens in the National Specimen Information Infrastructure (NSII) in China. The results demonstrated extremely low coverage in the taxonomic, spatial and temporal dimensions in both the GBIF dataset and the integrated dataset; moreover, the complementary effectiveness of additional datasets was quite limited. Our results emphasize the importance of research to fill the data gaps at national, regional and local scales. Effective strategies to improve the availability of DAK not only in China but also throughout the world are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the in-depth development of informatization, the role of new ventures and small and micro enterprises in economic growth has become increasingly prominent. However, rare literature systematically studies the impact of informatization on entrepreneurship. Based on the data from the 2011 China Household Finance Survey and the Report of China Informationization Development Assessment (2013), this paper uses the probit model, the multiple-choice probit model, and the Heckman two-stage model to examine the influence of informationization on entrepreneurial choices and entrepreneurial performance. The research finds the following conclusions. Firstly, informationization not only significantly improves the probability of entrepreneurship, but also facilitates the realization of income and employment effects from entrepreneurship. Secondly, information infrastructure, government informationization, and resident informationization, as informationization dimensions, can significantly increase the probability of entrepreneurship, although enterprise informationization plays an opposite role. Finally, the influence of informationization on promoting entrepreneurship varies with entrepreneurial type and entrepreneurial industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things (IoT) is aimed at enabling the interconnection and integration of the physical world and the cyber space. It represents the trend of future networking, and leads the third wave of the IT industry revolution. In this article, we first introduce some background and related technologies of IoT and discuss the concepts and objectives of IoT. Then, we present the challenges and key scientific problems involved in IoT development. Moreover, we introduce the current research project supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program). Finally, we outline future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]