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Well-designed environmental regulations are a prerequisite for achieving green economic growth. However, the effectiveness of campaign-style environmental regulation—a widely used environmental management instrument in developing nations or even in some developed nations, on green economic growth remains under-researched and has not reached a consistent conclusion. This paper takes advantage of China's Central Environmental Protection Inspector policy—the strictest and largest campaign-style environmental regulation policy in China's history, as a natural experiment and uses the difference-in-differences method to explore the effect of campaign-style environmental regulation on green economic growth, and further analyze its underlying mechanisms and heterogeneity effects. The panel data covering 280 prefecture-level cities in China from 2009 to 2019 are used. Our results show that Central Environmental Protection Inspector can result in an average of 14.2% increase in green economic growth, and this effect is sustainable for a long time. Mechanism analysis shows that Central Environmental Protection Inspector boosts green economic growth mainly by promoting green innovation and optimizing industrial structure. Further heterogeneity analysis reveals that the positive effect of Central Environmental Protection Inspector on green economic growth is greater in eastern China and underdeveloped cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Amidst the mounting interest in China's Ecological Civilization (EC) campaign, this paper examines its ground-level implementation and its influences on fostering eco-conscious urban governance. Employing a temporal approach to scrutinize the change in local priorities over time, this paper conducts a detailed case study of Dali, a tourist destination in Southwest China. Environmental protection has escalated in this city over the last decade, manifesting in diverse measures adopted by the local government, including the demolition of hundreds of buildings in the core conservation zone of the lake Erhai. This paper demonstrates how the campaign of EC has strengthened environmental efforts locally, while emphasizing that local compliance relies on heightened oversight and financial support from the central government. Moreover, this paper argues that, despite resembling a degrowth strategy in terms of rhetoric and short-term effects, EC-led demolition serves as a spatio-temporal fix that has helped the local government to address both ecological and political imperatives, with growth coalitions being reconfigured. Overall, this paper contributes to scholarly discussions on the impacts of the EC campaign, expands the comprehension of the dynamic process of greening urban governance, and spotlights the analytical prowess of the demolition lens in such studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy shortage and excessive carbon emissions have become the main constraints to the sustainable development of China's logistics industry. Improving the efficiency of the logistics industry is crucial to promoting regional ecological environment protection and sustainable development of the logistics industry. In this paper, the efficiency of China's logistics industry in 2013–2019 is evaluated by using the non-oriented EBM model considering the unexpected output, and then the influencing factors of the efficiency of the logistics industry in the central region are analyzed by using the panel Tobit model. The results show that the logistics industry in the central region is at a low efficiency level. Factors, such as the level of economic development, industrial structure and technical level have a significant positive impact on the efficiency of the logistics industry in the central region, while factors such as government support and logistics infrastructure have a significant negative impact on the efficiency of the logistics industry in the central region. Finally, the paper puts forward some targeted recommendations for the sustainable development of the logistics industry in the central region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simultaneously achieving economic development and environmental protection is a shared global challenge. While the positive effect of environmental regulations on protecting the environment has been widely recognized, the attention paid to low-carbon governance and corporate green transformation remains insufficient. Based on the two-stage least square regression model (2SLS) of instrumental variables, this paper utilizes panel data from China to identify the influence mechanism of government low-carbon governance on enterprise green development. It explores the effect of low-carbon governance on enterprise green development from the perspective of fiscal decentralization. The findings show that (1) Low-carbon governance significantly promotes corporate green development, primarily through improving industrial structure and technological innovation; (2) Low-carbon governance notably promotes the green development of private enterprises but has little effect on state-owned enterprises. There are also geographical differences, and the results are better in Eastern China than in the Central and Western parts of China; (3) Fiscal decentralization at both central and local levels inhibits the effect of low-carbon governance on driving corporate green development by causing a mismatch of human resources. Therefore, to promote corporate green development, low-carbon governance must prioritize green development, actively guide industrial structural upgrading and enterprise technological innovation, implement differentiated low-carbon governance measures tailored to different ownership enterprises, and optimize the assessment indicators for fiscal decentralization. This paper helps deepen the understanding of the relationship between government low-carbon governance and enterprise green development in developing countries. It can be used as a reference for government departments to formulate relevant policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of China's implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law (EPT Law) on 1 January 2018, this paper empirically investigates the influence of environmental regulations on the investment behaviour of heavily polluting firms using a difference-in-differences (DID) model. The EPT Law is found to improve the investment efficiency of heavily polluting firms by restraining overinvestment, an effect that applies mainly to private firms, particularly those with no political affiliations. This paper enriches the existing research on the economic consequences of the EPT Law by integrating environmental regulations, property rights, political affiliation and investment efficiency into a unified framework. This study's findings are instructive for understanding the economic effects of environmental regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the digital economy on sustainable development, using panel data from cities at the prefecture level and above in China from 2011 to 2019. The results indicate: (1) The digital economy is conducive to boosting growth, increasing employment, reducing energy consumption, and cutting emissions, thereby promoting sustainable development. These findings prove robust. (2) Mechanism test outcomes reveal that, from the perspective of technological innovation, the digital economy can promote sustainable development through increasing R&D input and enhancing innovation output. (3) An extended analysis of the risk of a digital "divide" demonstrates that "dividend" of the digital economy is primarily manifests in spurring economic growth, enhancing energy efficiency, and strengthening environmental protection in lagging regions, while the digital "divide" effect is manifested in the stronger employment stimulating effect of developed regions versus backward areas. The results of this study not only enrich the relevant research system, but also provide empirical evidence to support accelerating digital transformation, strengthening technological innovation governance, and advancing sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, there exists a huge debate for a long time on whether a double dividend, reducing pollution emissions and boosting employment, can be achieved by intensifying environmental regulations. In this paper, we use two data sets on provincial environmental legislation and Chinese manufacturing firms during 1998–2013, to estimate the impact of provincial environmental legislation on the firms' employment growth with a difference-in-difference (DID) model. Results showed that (1) after the implementation of environmental legislation, the employment growth of regulated manufacturing firms decreases significantly by 3.07%, and this result is robust to alternative tests. (2) Local environmental legislation reduces employment growth mainly via the influencing mechanism of the firm's entry and exit, export, and innovation. (3) The local environmental legislation has heterogeneous impacts on employment growth in different industries and different regions, and the estimated effect is more obvious in high-pollution industries and areas with strong enforcement. (4) Environmental legislation significantly improves job destruction and reduces job creation, resulting in a − 3.86% job net increase. Due to the long-term implementation of extensive economic growth mode, China's ecological environment has been deteriorating since the 1990s, and environmental pollution has attracted more and more social attention. Until 2013, the Communist Party of China put forward 'ecological civilization', and building a beautiful new China with harmonious coexistence between man and nature has become an important development strategy. Meanwhile, starting from the implementation of the Two-Control-Zone policy in 1998, China has implemented numerous environmental policies in just ten years. These environmental policies have greatly improved the quality of China's ecological environment, but their economic effects have been controversial. Given the special historical period, this paper helps assess the impact of Chinese environmental policies on employment and provides a more objective policy evaluation and implications for improving existing laws and regulations to achieve higher social welfare. To achieve this goal of balancing the improvement of the ecological environment and high employment level, environmental policies firstly should be flexible to ensure that the environmental standards follow the firm's characteristics and regional characteristics to avoid "one size fits all". Particularly, for regions with poor economic development or having a single industrial structure, the implementation cycle of the environmental policies should be extended to ensure that they have enough time to achieve industrial restructuring and complete the environmental protection goals. Secondly, we find that environmental legislation hurts employment growth by limiting export decisions, so the government should use multiple channels to stabilize export when implementing environmental legislation. Thirdly, technological R&D and innovation play an important role in the effect of environmental legislation on firms' employment growth. Therefore, the government should provide a more flexible environment for firms' R&D and innovation with appropriate fiscal policies and technical support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper draws on a natural experiment generated by the Key Tax Source (KTS) supervision in China to evaluate the impact of strengthening tax administration on firm's emission behavior. Using a Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design, we find that KTS supervision by State Administration of Taxation significantly improves firm's SO2 emissions. The mechanism analysis shows that, KTS firms tend to reduce their tax burden by over-emitting pollution; Meanwhile, local governments loosen environmental regulation on the KTS firms, which eventually causes KTS firms to adjust the energy utilization structure and reduce environmental protection investment. Further analysis shows that the pollution emission by KTS firms can be reduced by the implemented of tax credits and the improved environmental regulation standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing uncertainty of urban security, urban resilience construction with risk awareness and bottom-line thinking has become essential for promoting sustainable urban development. This paper measures China's urban resilience development index (CRDI) based on 284 cities in China (except Tibet) using the entropy method from four dimensions: economic, social, environmental, and infrastructure, and analyzes it by combining coupling coordination degree and barrier factor analysis. We find that: (1) At the national level, CRDI and its sub-dimensions show an increasing trend in time, a decreasing spatial layout from coastal to inland, and a "high-high-low-low" clustering feature in space. (2) At the regional level, the CRDI is from high to low in the east, middle, and west order. The sub-dimensions are from high to low in the order of east, middle, and west for economic, social, and infrastructure resilience and from high to low in the order of east, west, and middle for environmental resilience. (3) To coupling coordination degree, the CRDI index coupling coordination is increasing in time trend but is still on the verge of dissonance. (4) Social resilience is the main obstacle factor. In the indicator layer, human resources, innovation, education, security, living, and environmental protection are the areas where CRDI coordinated development is the key to improvement. Based on the above empirical evidence, this paper proposes countermeasures to optimize urban resilience construction from four perspectives: economic, social, environmental, and infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In this paper, the authors take the central environmental protection inspection (CEPI) as an exogenous shock to study the reaction of the stock market in China. Using the event study method, the authors check how the first round of the first batch of CEPI supervision affects the cumulative abnormal return (CAR) of the listed firms on the Shenzhen or Shanghai stock exchange. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, the authors take the first round of the first batch of CEPI supervision as a clean exogenous shock to study its effects on the capital market. The authors collect daily trading data from the China stock market and accounting research (CSMAR) database, with the sample containing 1,950 Chinese firms listed on either the Shenzhen or Shanghai stock exchanges. And detailed information on CEPI supervision is obtained from the official website of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China. The event study method is adopted to analyze the reaction of the stock market under CEPI supervision. Specifically, the authors constructed the cumulative abnormal return of each firm around the event day of CEPI. To capture the deterrent effects of CEPI supervision, the authors examine the situation of polluting and non-polluting firms in the supervised provinces, adjacent provinces and provinces that are not supervised or close to the supervised provinces, respectively. Findings: This paper throws light on the following: (1) the polluting firms in the supervised provinces were negatively impacted by CEPI within 20 trading days of the event day, and its effects spread to the polluting firms in the neighboring provinces; (2) CEPI had a favorable impact on the non-polluting businesses in the provinces that are neither supervised nor close to the supervised provinces. The authors contend that it is because the investment is being forced out of the polluting sector and into the non-polluting sector, which is more pronounced in the provinces not directly or indirectly targeted by CEPI; (3) by comparison, the "looking back monitoring of the first round" has had no discernible detrimental impact on the firms' CAR, indicating an important role of psychology anticipation of investors in the stock market performance; (4) although not physically located in the supervised provinces, the downstream enterprises of the polluting firms suffer significantly from CEPI shock; (5) the effectiveness of CEPI supervision in the supervised provinces depends on the level of local environmental regulation and the ownership structure of the company. Private firms in the provinces with stronger environmental regulations suffer more from the CEPI shock; (6) the multivariate analysis shows that while enterprises with high ROE and financial leverage may be at risk of CAR loss, older, larger firms are less likely to experience CEPI shock; (7) the study of persistent effect reveals that the strike of CEPI supervision can last for at least 10 months after the event day and deterrent effect can be spread within the whole polluting industry. Research limitations/implications: In this paper, the authors only concentrate on the market reaction within 20 trading days after the event day. An analysis of long-term effects should be valuable to get a deeper knowledge of the capital market reaction to the CEPI policy. In addition, the paper only focuses on the first round of the first batch of CEPI. Since CEPI has been built as a constant regulation of local environmental performance, further study may need to track both the reaction of listed firms and investment behavior in the capital market. Practical implications: Policy implications of the paper are as follows: First, for the policymakers, it is important to construct a constant environmental regulation system instead of a campaign movement. Second, for investors, as environmental issues are receiving increasing attention from both the government and the public, investment decisions should take into account firms' environmental performance, which can help reduce the risk from environmental regulations. Third, the firms in the polluting industry should take more action to reduce pollutant releases and adopt green technology, which is essential for sustainable development under environmental protection. Originality/value: This paper contributes to the existing literature in the following aspects. First, the authors provide new evidence on the effects of environmental regulations as a shock to the stock market, which has been wildly concentrated in the literature about environmental policies evaluation and capital market reaction. Second, the authors supplement the literature on green finance and sustainability transformation, which has got increasing attention in recent years. Theoretically, by guiding investment and affecting the stock market performance, environmental regulations are considered to be an efficient way to stimulate polluting firms to transform into green development. The results of the paper support this intuition by showing that the CAR of the non-polluting firms in non-supervised provinces in fact benefit from the CEPI supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of environmental protection tax on green technology innovation of Chinese resource-based enterprises and behavior of thirdparty environmental monitoring institutions. It uses game theory to analyze participants' strategy selections, and uses the triple difference method to empirically test the promotion effect. Our robust results find that (1) Chinese environmental tax policy effectively promotes the green innovation of resource-based enterprises and standardizes the behavior of third-party monitoring institutions; (2) local governments' actions such as increasing environmental protection tax, penalizing third-party monitoring agencies for violations, and promoting public preference for green consumption, all contribute to accelerating enterprises' green innovation; (3) the central government's increased regulation of local governments has a positive impact on enterprises and third-party monitoring institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air pollution poses a great danger to human health and economic development, and understanding people's willingness to pay for improved air quality (WTPA) impacts environmental protection. This paper investigates WTPA based on the perspective of subjective well-being (SWB) and analyzes the mediating role of social interaction on the relationship between the two. This paper distinguishes social interactions into online and offline interactions and analyzes whether the mediating effect of the two different interactions on SWB and WTPA exists separately. Using data from the 2018 China General Social Survey (CGSS), we find that SWB has a significant positive effect on WTPA, individuals with higher well-being have higher pro-environmental willingness; there is no age, education level, sex of the person, or regional heterogeneity in the effect of SWB on WTPA; offline social interactions play a partially mediating role between SWB and WTPA, while online social interactions failed to mediate between the two. This paper's policy implication is that improving residents' subjective well-being is both an important development goal and an essential way to resolve the conflict between economic development and environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper mainly studies whether Foxconn's green human resource management can bring benefits to Foxconn and puts forward suggestions on the problems existing in the implementation of green human resource management in Foxconn. The data for this chapter comes from Foxconn employees in Yantai, Shandong Province. Foxconn's HR green practices include green recruitment, green training, green performance, green compensation and green participation. After analysis, it is concluded that the education level of Foxconn employees is generally low, which is not conducive to the implementation of green human resources practices. Foxconn did not give full play to the leading role of supervisors in green participation practices. This study believes that enterprises should play the role of supervisors when implementing human resource green practices, and supervisors should give support and guidance when employees participate in environmental protection activities. Foxconn should focus on improving the education level of its employees. The research results of this paper are helpful for enterprises to achieve the goal of green development, help enterprises to further understand the green practice strategy of human resources, make the development of enterprises meet the requirements of green environmental protection, and improve the competitive advantage of enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has long exercised environmental control through the imposition of sewage charges. The start of the environmental protection tax on January 1, 2018, means that China has entered a new phase of environmental control. Unlike many previous studies on the role of environmental taxes at the firm level, this paper examines whether environmental taxes affect pollution emissions by influencing the behavioral choices of micro-actors. This paper first reviews the Pyrrhic tax, the Porter hypothesis, and the "double dividend effect." We then construct provincial panel data for 30 provinces in China from 2012 to 2019 as a sample, use the environmental protection tax as a natural experiment to evaluate the policy of this environmental protection tax using propensity score matching and difference-in-differences model, investigate the intermediate transmission mechanism of the policy implementation, and then analyze the differences in policy effects between provinces with different levels of economic development. The increased tax burden in 2018 led to a general reduction in provincial pollution emissions in which technological innovation by various groups, including firms and universities, had a mediating role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law (the EPT Law) in China on 1 January 2018, this paper employs the difference-in-difference model (DID) to empirically investigates how the environmental regulations affects the green transformation of highly polluting firms. The results indicate that the EPT Law has significantly aided in the green transformation of highly polluting firms, with the increasing pressure of environmental legality acting as a partial mediating effect. This paper adds to the research on the economic effects of the environmental regulations and provides new evidence to support the incentive perspective on environmental regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the conduction of decentralized environmental governance, environmental punishment has become a pivotal complementary tool for local government environment management and an intuitive reflection of governance efficiency. However, the literature concerning the effect of local government environmental punishment towards the green technology innovation of enterprises is void. To bridge this gap, this paper adopts the fixed‐effect model to investigate the impact of government environmental punishment on green technology innovation based on the data of China's A‐share listed enterprises from 2010 to 2020. The study finds that the punishment can significantly promote enterprises' green technology innovation. The distinction between the type of innovation reveals that environmental punishment promotes substantive green technology innovation of enterprises, while the effect on strategic green technology innovation is not significant. As far as the influence path is concerned, external pressure and internal incentive are both important mechanisms for environmental punishment to facilitate the green technology innovation of enterprises. Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the positive effect of punishment on green technology innovation is more prominent in non‐state‐owned enterprises, heavily polluting industries and regions with strong public awareness of environmental protection. Further discussion reveals that the facilitative effect of punishment on green technology innovation also significantly improves the environmental performance of enterprises. This paper not only confirms the positive role of government intervention in environmental protection, but also provides practical reference for how to improve enterprises' competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imported air pollution has a significant impact on urban air quality. Relevant studies have shown that many urban air pollution events are not resourced by local emissions but are imported by air pollution from surrounding areas transported across regions. The prevention and control of air pollution is very necessary. However, the existing supervision of urban air quality mostly relies on ground monitoring stations, which are extremely limited in time and space, and cannot satisfy continuous time-space air pollution research. Therefore, aiming at the problem of urban air pollution control, this paper used MERRA-2 reanalysis data and ground monitoring data to establish a "Time-Longitude-Latitude" three-dimensional pollution curve, and then a genetic algorithm was used to optimize its fitting. This study finally reconstructed the imported air pollution transmission route. This paper takes an air pollution event that occurred in Xuzhou City, China, on 12 January 2020, as an example. Through the analysis of aerosol optical depth (AOD), particulate matter (PM), wind speed, and other factors, we found the source, transmission route, and impact time of this pollution. We have verified the correctness and accuracy of the reconstructed contamination transport paths. It is proved that the method is universal and it can quickly and accurately restore the air pollution transmission route and identify the urban imported air pollution transmission entrance. This method will also provide strong data support for the division of responsibilities of environmental protection departments in various regions for severe air pollution transmission events and provide effective governance ideas for the prevention and control of imported air pollution in recipient cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the massive use of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles and energy storage, the environmental and resource problems faced by used lithium-ion batteries are becoming more and more prominent. In order to better resource utilization and environmental protection, this paper employs bibliometric and data analysis methods to explore publications related to waste lithium-ion battery recycling from 1984 to 2021. The Web of Science core set from the SCIE online database was used for this article. These findings demonstrate a considerable increase trend in the number of publications published in the subject of recycling used lithium-ion batteries, with a natural-sciences-centric focus. Argonne National Lab, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and China Academic and Scientific Research Center are the top three institutions in terms of quantity of papers published. The affiliated journals corresponding to these three institutions also have high impact factors, which are 106.47, 44.85, and 58.69, respectively. In comparison to comparable institutes in other nations, the American Argonne National Laboratory supports 223 research articles in this area. China and the US make up the majority of the research's funding. The two key aspects of current lithium-ion battery recycling research are material structure research and environmentally friendly recycling. Nevertheless, high-capacity lithium-ion batteries, waste lithium-ion integrated structures, and gentle recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries will be the major aspects of study in the future. It is hoped that the above analysis can bring new ideas and methods to the field of waste lithium-ion battery recycling and provide a basis for the subsequent research and application of waste lithium-ion battery recycling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on measuring the green transformation of heavily polluting enterprises based on the sub-dimensions of green strategy and green action, we empirically analyze whether and how bank digitization affects the green transformation of enterprises by using the data of China's A-share heavily polluting enterprises from 2010 to 2021. The findings show that 1) bank digitization has a significant positive effect on firms' green transformation; 2) bank digitization promotes firms' green transformation by alleviating firms' financing constraints and improving firms' ESG performance; 3) governmental environmental regulations and media attention positively moderates the relationship between bank digitization and firms' green transformation; and 4) bank digitization is more likely to promote the green transformation of firms that are highly digitized, non-state-owned firms, and enterprises in the eastern region; 5) the sub-dimension test shows that bank digitization has significant differences on different dimensions of green transformation. The above analysis shows that bank digitization should be deeply integrated with the green transformation of enterprises, and the former should be deeply embedded in supervising, forcing and empowering enterprises to upgrade environmental protection technology and sewage treatment, and the regulator should formulate a more detailed environmental protection disclosure program to realize the consistency "words" and "deeds" of the green transformation of enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resource-based regions support national economic development and are essential sources of basic energy and raw materials. In the post-pandemic era, however, there are practical situations to deal with, such as a fractured industrial chain, a weaker industrial structure, and a sharp reduction in economic benefits. Based on data collected from 68 cities in China, from 2010 to 2021, with 816 observations, this paper explores the industrial development process of resource-based regions in China and the change in the toughness of the industrial structure under the impact of COVID-19. The paper studies and analyzes industrial development trends, industrial structure toughness, and spatial spillover effects. The methods used are the Markov chain model and the Industrial Structure Advancement Index. By building the spatial Dubin model, the paper analyzes the spatial spillover effect of regional industrial development. It decomposes the spillover effect using the partial differential model based on regression. The results show that, during the study period, the comprehensive development level of industries in resource-based regions in China was slowly improving and tended to stabilize after entering the post-pandemic era. The evolution of an advanced industrial structure is significantly heterogeneous among regions, and each region has different toughness. The impact of COVID-19 has reduced the toughness of China's resource-based regions' industrial structure. The spatial spillover effect of regional industrial development is significant. Labor force, technology input, and industrial-structure optimization have different impacts on the industrial development of neighboring regions. In the post-pandemic era, China has used new management methods for more innovation. In order to achieve low-carbon, environmental protection, and sustainable development of resources, realize the rapid recovery of the toughness of industrial structure in China's resource-based cities, and reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, China proposes to expand the supply of resources, improve the allocation of resources, optimize the direction, promote the rational flow and efficient aggregation of various factors, and enhance the impetus for innovation and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated energy system is crucial in realizing China's "dual carbon" targets. Considering the carbon capture based electricity to gas and the interaction of multiple markets, this paper proposes a low-carbon operation optimization method of integrated energy system. In terms of market policy, a coupling trading mechanism for carbon trade and green certificates is established. This approach is intended to delve into the profound significance of utilizing green certificates in carbon emission reduction. In terms of equipment models, the coupling model of carbon capture equipment with coal-fired cogeneration unit, as well as power-to-gas equipment with renewable energy, is constructed. In addition, this equipment model is introduced into the operation optimization scheduling of the comprehensive energy systems. A low-carbon economic operational strategy is further proposed to minimize the daily operational costs, by which the integrated energy system is eco-nomically, environmental protection optimized. To verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed model, this paper sets up several comparison scenarios and conducts the simulations using GUROBI solver. The results show that the proposed strategy can effectively improve the uptake rate of renewable energy, reduce the carbon emission, improve the operation economy, and realize the complementary incentive effect between markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affected by the epidemic and other factors, the global economy is in a downturn, and countries around the world are under unprecedented debt pressure. How will this affect environmental protection? Taking China as an example, this paper empirically studies the impact of changes in local government behavior on urban air quality under fiscal pressure. This paper uses the generalized method of moments (GMM) to find that fiscal pressure has significantly reduced PM2.5 emissions, with a unit increase in fiscal pressure will increase PM2.5 by about 2%. The mechanism verification shows that three channels affect PM2.5 emissions: (1) fiscal pressure has prompted local governments to relax the supervision of existing pollution-intensive enterprises. (2) Local governments reduce environmental regulations for attracting more pollution-intensive enterprises. (3) Local governments tend to reduce environmental protection investment to save fiscal expenses. The paper's conclusions provide new policy ideas for promoting environmental protection in China, as well as served as a case for analyzing current changes in environmental protection in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

t An index system is constructed to measure the integration of environmental protection and high-quality economic development in different cities in China from 2006 to 2018, and to explore its evolution and driving forces. From the three dimensions of integration foundation, integration depth and integration performance, this paper adopts AHP-Entropy combined weighting method to build the integration index. In addition, this paper comprehensively uses exponential decomposition, comparative analysis and σ convergence and divergence analysis to explore the spatio-temporal differences and dynamic mechanisms. The results show that the overall integration level of China’s cities continues to improve, of which technological progress is the core driving force, the transformation of development mode is a crucial path, and the intensity of environmental governance is the key support. The evolution and driving forces of the integration level of first-tier cities, new first-tier cities and other cities are significantly different. Promoting integration level is a critical way for resourcebased cities to break the resource curse. Urban agglomeration integration led by the growth pole can effectively improve the overall regional integration level. This paper innovates that the relationship between environmental protection and high-quality economic development is discussed from the perspective of integration, and the paths to improve the integration level of resource-based cities and urban agglomerations are identified. This paper is helpful to clarify the differences in integration levels and driving forces of different cities, and provide a reference value for the precise implementation of high-quality development and “beautiful China.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China confronts a challenging dilemma between environmental protection and economic development as it endeavors to achieve dual carbon goals. To discern a feasible developmental path, this paper designs a comprehensive index of the digital economy encompassing four dimensions: input, production, output, and consumption, conducts an empirical analysis to explore the relationship between the digital economy and carbon emissions by using a two-way fixed effect model with China's provincial data from 2013 to 2019, and suggests that the digital economy can significantly reduce carbon emissions and carbon intensity. Public low carbon awareness and green innovation are mechanisms that mediate the association between the digital economy and carbon emissions. The carbon reduction effect varies across dimensions of the digital economy, regions, and sources of carbon emissions. These empirical findings provide valuable insights and policy implications to effectively achieve China's dual carbon goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of China's synergistic development of import and export strategies and water environmental protection, this paper analyzes the role of two-way FDI synergistic development in water environmental governance efficiency based on panel data of 30 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China from 2004 to 2021. The paper uses a fixed effect model and analyzes the role of heterogeneous technological innovation using the mediation effect model and the panel threshold model. The results of the study show the following: (1) overall, two-way FDI synergistic development helps to improve China's water environmental governance efficiency; (2) there is regional heterogeneity in the effect of two-way FDI synergistic development on China's water environmental governance efficiency, with a significant positive effect in areas along the coast and with high FDI synergistic development levels and an inhibitory effect in inland areas; and (3) the two-way FDI synergy enhances the efficiency of China's water environmental governance by improving the levels of independent innovation and imitation innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The marine economy has become an increasingly important contributor to the global economy due to advancements in science and technology and humans' growing ability to manipulate nature. As a country with a vast marine territory, China has the important responsibility of utilizing marine resources rationally and promoting sustainable development of the marine economy. Since the introduction of the Marine Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China (MEPL) in 1982, China has made significant progress in strengthening the legal framework for marine environmental protection. MEPL has undergone several revisions to improve its legal content under the guidance of national policies. On October 24, 2023, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress revised and adopted MEPL again. This paper analyzes the changes in the contents of the new law and the legal background at home and abroad while integrating the domestic and international legal backgrounds. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the changes made in the new law, summarizes the revision ideas, and examines the new law in the context of domestic and international laws. The aim is to provide a clear understanding of the spirit and purpose of the legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the path from ecological discourse (ED) to ecological behaviour (EB) in environmental protection from the perspective of the ecolinguistic continuum. ED (i.e. beneficial and destructive discourse) is taken as a new indicator for improving individual EB in environmental protection. Based on the questionnaire survey data of 992 participants from 27 (79.4%) provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities in China, a tentative structural equation model (SEM) is established consisting of ED, ecological values (EV), ecological intention (EI), and EB. Through the path analysis (mediating and moderating effect test) by AMOS 23.0 software, the results show that ED cannot directly affect EB, which may be mediated by EV or EI, or both of the two, but the probability of an individual's ecological practice will be increased by the influence of beneficial ED as input. Furthermore, under the moderating of ED, the probability of transforming EI into EB is greater than that of EV, suggesting that ED has a bigger voice in EI→EB, and a positive and significant moderating effect of beneficial discourse is tested. Thus, ED as an indicator provides a new perspective on environmental protection and sustainable development. Potential applications for this indicator are also included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the continuous progress of constructing sustainable environments in China, the role played by the Chinese central government as the main body for promoting green development is worth studying. Because China's ecological civilization building has been steadily progressing. Governments at all levels in China have prioritised the development of environmental civilization as a key aspect of regional growth. However, the actual impact and mechanisms of influence of this construction still require further investigation. This paper constructs a government environmental attention index using word frequency found in the Report on the Work of the Government. It uses a long difference model to study the impact and mechanism of government environmental attention on urban green efficiency, carbon emissions and air quality. The results show that the government's ecological attention can improve green efficiency, and air quality, but it can also lead to increased carbon emissions, and the impact is particularly evident in the eastern and western regions of the country. This is because the government's emphasis on the environment significantly impacts on environmental regulations and technological progress, and is directly influenced by fiscal bias and financial pressure. Given the results, we put forward some policy suggestions that local governments should improve the intensity of local environmental regulation, encourage green technology innovation, provide encouraging conditions for environmental development, and establish a long-term strategic vision. The findings in this study has implications for promoting the implementation of local governments' environmental protection and the development of sustainable societies in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the development of membrane structures in China. It begins with a historical review of the early applications of membrane structures in the country, highlighting pivotal events and engineering endeavors that contributed to the development. Subsequently, recent advancements in the realm of membrane structures in China are succinctly summarized. The past decade has witnessed notable progress in the implementation of membrane structures, particularly within expansive stadiums and indoor sports arenas. Additionally, cases exemplifying the diverse applications of membrane structures in various projects are presented. Noteworthy among these are the incorporation of membrane structures in building facades, suspended ceilings for indoor spaces, and the utilization of ETFT membrane structures. Furthermore, applications of air-supported membrane structures are explored, especially in the areas of sports facilities and environmental protections. Technical standards and specifications that have played an important guiding role in the development of membrane structures in China are introduced in the last. Finally, 8 issues for the future research and development of membrane structures are pointed out in the conclusion part. It is expected that this paper can serve as a catalyst for further advancement and practical implementation of membrane structures in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reasonably and effectively formulating the best route for urban waste transportation vehicle is particularly important for realizing low carbon and environmental protection of Green China construction concept. However, the current path planning method has shortcomings such as local optimization. In order to solve this problem, this paper aims at low carbon and environmental protection construction needs and proposes a routing optimization method of waste transportation vehicles based on improved ant colony algorithm. Firstly, the mathematical model of Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is constructed by considering transportation distance and carbon emissions cost. Then, network parameters in traditional ant colony algorithm are combined and optimized to realize self-adaptive update in the whole cycle. Furthermore, the neighborhood algorithm is used to iteratively optimize improved algorithm to avoid the defects of local optimization when solving VRP problem. Finally, the simulation results based on an actual dataset in North China show that the proposed method can achieve efficient and accurate optimal routing optimization for complex samples, and its solution stability index Pbest is 0.87 and the average deviation Var is 0.011, the lowest distribution cost after optimization is about 3,080 yuan, which are better than the comparison methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the influence of the dual policies of sustainable economic development and the national dual-carbon target, the establishment of an environmental protection department for the treatment of heavily polluting industries is imminent, and the country has launched pollution control policies and regulations to restrict the emission rights of heavily polluting industries. Therefore, this paper focuses on whether the restriction of emission rights in key industries has reduced carbon emissions. To achieve this, this paper uses panel data of prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2019 and adopts a two-way fixed-effects DID model to systematically analyze the impact of the key pollution industry governance policies launched by the Ministry of Environmental Protection on CO2 emissions in 2017. And further analyze the role of variables such as green technology innovation patents and energy efficiency using this model, while parallel trend tests and placebo tests, and related policies are used to ensure the robustness of the regression results. This paper reveals that: (1) The heavy pollution industry governance policy implemented in 2017 can effectively reduce CO2 emissions in the cities of the treated group, and the effect is more significant in the year of policy implementation; (2) Green utility patents and energy-use efficiency are the effective mediating mechanisms to reduce CO2 emissions; (3) Over time, the effect of heavy pollution industry governance policy on CO2 emissions gradually decreases; (4) The reliability of the baseline regression results of this paper is proved by the use of parallel trend tests, placebo tests, and tests excluding the influence factors such as relevant policies in the same period. Therefore, the key polluting industries treatment policy launched by China's Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2017 under the recent dual-carbon policy development goals formulated by China, can effectively reduce carbon emissions; however, in the future economic development process, the government should give more consideration to the continuity of the policy impact and its coherence on economic development when implementing the policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes listed companies in the heavily polluting industry from 2009–2017 as a research sample to explore whether heavy pollution enterprises' environmental protection investment helps their debt financing under the institutional background of China's continuous implementation of green credit policy. It is found that, in general, the environmental protection investment of heavy pollution enterprises helps them to obtain more and relatively long-term new loans; in terms of time, this effect is more evident after the release of China's Green Credit Guidelines in 2012; in addition, the level of regional environmental pollution, the level of financial development and the green fiscal policy also have a moderating effect on this. This paper enriches the study of the economic consequences of corporate environmental protection investment from the perspective of debt financing. It examines the effects of the implementation of China's green credit policy and other institutional factors to provide a reference for the heavy pollution enterprises' environmental protection investment and the implementation of green credit policy by local governments in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past four decades, pollution and other forms of environmental degradation have radically transformed China's landscape. So have the ambitious greening policies implemented to tackle these problems. During the same period, an enormous gap in wealth and amenities has arisen between the modernizing cities and rural areas, the latter playing an important, and often ignored, role in China's environmental project. This paper identifies two paradoxical processes transforming rural environments: the mobilization of rural efforts to green the nation and the ruralization of pollution. While seemingly contradictory, both processes illustrate how the rural is expendable and malleable to state interests. This article proposes the concept of socio-environmental reproduction to theorize the environmental paradox in which many rural communities find themselves in contemporary China, as their environmental work and sacrifices sustain economic and political systems. This concept builds on the work on social reproduction by feminist scholars, particularly those who have sought to integrate the environment into their analyses. This paper proposes to expand the concept to include all the environmental work and sacrifices that certain people are asked to make to fuel the economic system, preserve political stability, and protect privileged spaces from pollution. As a whole, this article shows how China's rural–urban divide is constitutive of the country's environmental project and how national greening initiatives enable uneven development. Furthermore, this case foreshadows what will likely occur elsewhere as countries seek to green themselves. As the ecological era unfolds in China and elsewhere, it exposes how deep social divides are mobilized to fulfill environmental objectives. This paper theorizes the environmental work and sacrifices that risk falling on the shoulders of the most vulnerable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to study the impact of inclusive finance on agricultural green development, This paper uses both static panel and dynamic panel (system GMM model) estimation methods to make empirical analysis of the impact of inclusive financial development on agricultural green development. The results both find that there is a significant positive correlation between the level of inclusive financial development, real GDP per capita, the proportion of the added value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery in GDP and agricultural green development. This paper puts forward some countermeasures and suggestions to promote agricultural green development, including vigorously developing inclusive finance, promoting economic growth, promoting the development of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, and increasing environmental protection expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the sample of all A-share listed companies in China's securities market except insurance and financial enterprises from 2009 to 2021 to construct a long panel data, and explores whether the environmental investment of enterprises will promote their long-term sustainable development in China's unique and superior institutional and cultural environment from the perspective of Marxist ecological civilization. On the basis of controlling measurement errors, omitted variables, and endogenous problems of mutual causality to ensure the robustness of the research results, and further distinguishing the heterogeneous effects of environmental investment and sustainable development of enterprises in different degrees of market-oriented environment, the empirical study shows that (1) there is a significant positive relationship between environmental investment and sustainable development of enterprises. That is to say, environmental investment can help enterprises obtain social capital, alleviate resource constraints, enhance their market performance, and thus help their sustainable development in the future; (2) environmental protection investment has a significant positive impact on the sustainable development of enterprises in the mature market environment, while in the relatively backward market environment, environmental protection investment has no significant role in promoting the sustainable development of enterprises. This paper enriches the literature on corporate environmental investment, makes a preliminary test of the implementation effect of sustainable development in China, and provides more detailed empirical evidence for the government to further guide the implementation and implementation of corporate environmental responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting the development of low-carbon economy (LCEco) to protect the environment is an important dimension to enhance national competitiveness and an effective path to achieve high-quality national development. Therefore, based on the endogenous LCEco growth theory, from the two dimensions of financial technology innovation (FTI) and financial product innovation (FPI), using the spatial measurement method of SLM and SEM, using the panel data of 30 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) from 2009 to 2021, this paper deeply explores the impact of FTI and FPI on the development of LCEco. The results show that: FTI and FPI have synergistic effect and positive spatial spillover effect on the LCEco, whose elastic coefficients for them are respectively (–0.125, p < 0.05; –0.084, p < 0.05). Different regions have obvious heterogeneous effects on the FTI, FPI and LCEco, whose elastic coefficients for them are (0.318, p < 0.05; 0.332, p < 0.05). The conclusion not only provides empirical support for the endogenous LCEco growth theory, but also provides effective evidence for the high-quality development path of China's LCEco. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bioeconomy model provides an alternative view of global economic systems by putting sustainable practices combined with digital approaches at the forefront to tackle issues such as climate change. To address this new business trends, financial institutions began to set up the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) business units to evaluate their business strategies. This paper is aimed at examining the nonfinancial effect created by the digital transformation (DT) activities, highlighting the role of enterprise heterogeneity after the implementation of Environmental Protection Law (EPL) in China. We employ the panel data of A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2020, selecting DT and ESG indicators as the important representations of "Industry 5.0." Our empirical results demonstrate a positive impact of EPL on the ESG performance in sight of resource enterprises (REs), environmental enterprises (EEs), and polluting enterprises (PEs), but a negative impact of EPL on the DT indicators among those environmental related industries. Additional causal relationship regression reveals that enterprise DT has an intrinsic promoting effect on the ESG performance, emphasizing on the high risk of digitization process being the shock transmitters to enterprise nonfinancial indices. Notably, the connectedness of environmental policy illustrates dynamic patterns by parallel trend test and propensity score matching (PSM) DID regression. This paper is prone to benefit lawmakers, regulators, and firm executives responsible for analyzing and assessing enterprise digitization behavior by exploring the influence of macrolevel environmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conflict between agricultural production and environmental protection, especially vegetable production, is one of the world's most prominent concerns. The acceptance degree and possible response of new agricultural operation subjects, represented by Farmers Professional Cooperatives (FPCs), to green production policies are a core issue that must be considered when designing environmental policies in the future. Based on field survey data of 192 FPCs of vegetables in Shanghai, China, this paper uses a choice experiment method to test the willingness of cooperatives to adopt green production behaviors under different policy settings and to identify the differences under different operation scales. The results show that both mandatory policies and incentive policies have an impact on the willingness of cooperatives to adopt green production behaviors, but significant differences exist among FPCs of different operation scales. Specifically, the willingness of large-scale FPCs to adopt green production behavior is affected by key technology training and income subsidies, whereas the willingness of small-scale FPCs is only affected by income subsidies; the willingness of medium-scale FPCs is simultaneously affected by key technology training, income subsidies, and penalties. Therefore, when formulating relevant policies in the future, policy-makers should consider local conditions, including the endowment heterogeneity of the production and operation subjects, so as to enhance the level of green production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the external effect of the economic growth target pressure of local governments on establishment-level SO2 emissions. Design/methodology/approach: Based on manually collected panel data of 74,058 China's industrial establishments and more than 330 thousand observations from CIED and ESR, the authors use a firm-fixed effect model, instrumental variables estimation and heterogeneity tests to identify the environmental externality of economic growth target pressure. Findings: The establishments in cities that meet or slightly exceed the economic growth target experience greater negative externality measured by SO2 emission intensity. This external effect is more pronounced in regions: with a strict and overweighted target setting; with stronger officials' promotion incentives; with a low degree of marketization; and in firms with great economic importance. The authors identify the underlying mechanisms of dependence on dirty industry and the relaxation of environmental enforcement. And the environmental protection constraints in 2007 mitigate the negative externality. Practical implications: The paper sheds light on to what extent economic growth target pressure has a negative externality of pollution in China and how this pressure may conflict with environmental protection. Originality/value: This paper complements prior research on the economic effects of economic growth targets, expands the knowledge on the determinants of establishment-level pollution emission from the perspective of target pressure and provides insight into the environmental externality that results from political factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies related to oil and gas wells have attracted worldwide interest due to the increasing energy shortfall and the requirement of sustainable development and environmental protection. However, the state of oil and gas wells in terms of research characteristics, technological megatrends, article-produced patterns, leading study items, hot topics, and frontiers is unclear. This work is aimed at filling the research gaps by performing a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 6197 articles related to oil and gas wells published between 1900 and 2021. VOSviewer and CiteSpace software were used as the main data analysis and visualization tools. The analysis shows that the annual variation of article numbers, interdisciplinary numbers, and cumulative citations followed exponential growth. Oil and gas well research has promoted the expansion of research fields such as engineering, energy and fuels, geology, environmental sciences and ecology, materials science, and chemistry. The top 10 influential studies mainly focused on shale gas extraction and its impact on the environment. More studies were produced by larger author teams and inter-institution collaborations. Elkatatny and Guo have greatly contributed to the application of artificial intelligence in oil and gas wells. The two most contributing institutions were the Southwest Petr Univ and China Univ Petr from China. The People's Republic of China, the US, and Canada were the countries with the most contributions to the development of oil and gas wells. The authoritative journal in engineering technology was J Petrol Sci Eng, in environment technology was Environ Sci Technol, in geology was Aapg Bull, and in materials was Cement Concrete Res. The keyword co-occurrence network cluster analysis indicated that oil well cement, new energy development, machine learning, hydraulic fracturing, and natural gas and oil wells are the predominant research topics. The research frontiers were oil extraction and its harmful components (1992–2016), oil and gas wells (1997–2016), porous media (2007–2016), and hydrogen and shale gas (2012–2021). This paper comprehensively and quantitatively analyzes all aspects of oil and gas well research for the first time and presents valuable information about active and authoritative research entities, cooperation patterns, technology trends, hotspots, and frontiers. Therefore, it can help governments, policymakers, related companies, and the scientific community understand the global progress in oil and gas well research and provide a reference for technology development and application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frequent outbreaks of cyanobacterial blooms have become one of the most challenging water ecosystem issues and a critical concern in environmental protection. To overcome the poor stability of traditional detection algorithms, this paper proposes a method for detecting cyanobacterial blooms based on a deep-learning algorithm. An improved vegetation-index method based on a multispectral image taken by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was adopted to extract inconspicuous spectral features of cyanobacterial blooms. To enhance the recognition accuracy of cyanobacterial blooms in complex scenes with noise such as reflections and shadows, an improved transformer model based on a feature-enhancement module and pixel-correction fusion was employed. The algorithm proposed in this paper was implemented in several rivers in China, achieving a detection accuracy of cyanobacterial blooms of more than 85%. The estimate of the proportion of the algae bloom contamination area and the severity of pollution were basically accurate. This paper can lay a foundation for ecological and environmental departments for the effective prevention and control of cyanobacterial blooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to the debate on the nexus between informal economies and the environment by investigating the long-term dynamic impacts of China's informal economies on pollution and considering regional differences in informal economies' pollution. This paper uses the Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model to estimate the size of informal economies and employs econometric models to examine their relationships to pollution based on provincial-level panel data from 2000 to 2017. The results indicate that informal economies' effects on environmental pollution are not purely positive or negative. Rather, our model indicates that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between informal economies and pollution in the long run in China; this means that the level of environmental pollution increases at first and then decreases with the growth of informal economies. Further analysis shows that while this inverted, U-shaped relationship is significant in different regions of China, it is affected by different environmental impact factors. The paper concludes by discussing the policy implications for environmental protection and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to study the impact of the Ambient Air Quality Standard (2012) on the green innovation of Chinese firms in polluting industries. The analysis features "leverage effect" of Porter Hypothesis imposed by environmental regulations and exploits exogenous variations caused by the promulgation of the new policy. Based on the exogenous variations, this paper uses the time varying PSM-DID method. The findings of this study suggest that the implementation of the new policy improves firms' green innovation. Increments in R&D investment and environmental protection investment are channels through which the new standard positively affects firms' green innovation. The cross-sectional heterogeneity analysis exhibits that the effect of this environmental regulation is stronger for firms with bigger size and lower financial constraints. The contribution and significance of this study are as follows: our study enriches understanding of the impact of environmental regulation on firms' green innovation by empirically confirming the influencing channels of the impact of environmental regulations on green innovation. In addition, this paper contributes to the firms' green innovation literature by empirically validating the role of corporate characteristics in moderating the effect of environmental regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The low efficiency of environmental policy implementation is an important issue in China's environmental governance. The Environmental Protection Interview (EPI) policy is an administrative means for the central environmental protection department to urge local governments to earnestly fulfill their environmental protection responsibilities. This paper takes China's EPI policy as a quasi-natural experiment. We use panel data of 261 prefecture-level cities in China from 2009 to 2018 as research sample and use spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) model to investigate the effect and mechanism of EPI policy on air pollution. The results show that EPI policy can effectively improve air quality, EPI policy has obvious spatial spillover effects. Namely, the EPI policy can not only reduce the local air pollution, but also reduce the air pollution in neighbouring cities. The EPI policy reduces the air pollution in the neighbouring cities within a spatial attenuation boundary of 400 km.The results of mechanism test show that the EPI policy can improve air quality by promoting industrial structure upgrading and technical advancement. Moreover, the pollution reduction effect of EPI is more significant in resource-based cities. The research results of this paper provide important reference for China and other developing countries to improve air quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although forest devolution, as a type of decentralization, is a high priority in the policy agendas of developing countries, recentralization has also occurred. In this paper, we focus on emerging recentralization within the devolution process of Collective Forest Tenure Reform (CFTR) in China's southern provinces and conceptualize this process as "recentralized forest devolution." In this paper, we update a key framework for analyzing decentralization and recentralization in governance processes based on the "policy arrangement approach." Case studies were conducted in four counties of the Fujian and Yunnan provinces by tracing governance dynamics from 2001 to 2019. Our study found that the central government has tightened upward accountability and recentralized power for environmental conservation since 2012 under the discourse of "Ecological Civilization." At the local level, recentralized forest devolution was expressed in terms of the restricted timber harvest levels for the purposes of environmental conservation. Therefore, forest devolution could be more vulnerable than expected by researchers and potentially interwoven with recentralization processes. Discourses, actors, property rights, and power are, therefore, considered to be interwoven in the complex dynamics of decentralization and recentralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, with the development of China's industry, the pollution problem of heavy metal wastewater in the country has become increasingly serious. In this paper, peanut shells modified with zinc chloride were selected as an adsorbent for the adsorption of Ag+ , and the optimal conditions for this adsorption were investigated. The results showed that the best adsorption effect was achieved at pH 4.0, an initial concentration of 250 μg/mL of Ag+ , a dosage of 0.10 g of peanut shell, a contact time of 40 min, and a temperature of 20°C. The prepared materials were also characterized by scanning electron microscopy and an X-ray diffraction analyzer. It was found that the skeleton did not change after the peanut shell treatment: the pores became larger; and the peanut shells had good adsorption capacity for Ag+ after being modified with zinc chloride. The kinetic, thermodynamic, and isothermal properties of the adsorption process were analyzed, showing that the adsorption conforms to the quasisecond-order kinetic equation and to the Freundlich adsorption isotherm. By this method, the heavy metal Ag+ in wastewater can be absorbed at low cost and with high efficiency, providing protection to the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the panel data of provincial units in China from 2000 to 2020, this paper uses the entropy method to calculate agricultural environmental regulation level in China from the perspectives of afforestation projects, water conservancy projects and environmental protection projects. Then, this paper calculates agricultural non-point source pollutant emissions in China by using the unit survey and evaluation method, and calculates agricultural green productivity growth in China by using the SBM directional distance function and Luenberger productivity index. On this basis, the influence of environmental regulation on agricultural green productivity growth in China and its mechanism are empirically analysed. The results show that:(1) During the sample period, agricultural environmental regulation level and agricultural green productivity growth increased significantly, while the emission density of agricultural non-point source pollution decreased significantly; (2) On the whole, environmental regulation significantly promoted agricultural green productivity growth in China, which was mainly reflected in the promotion of agricultural green technology progress change; (3) Environmental regulation can significantly promote agricultural green productivity growth in China through the channel of agricultural innovation investment. The innovation of this paper lies in the measurement of agricultural environmental regulation, and the analysis of the moderating effect of agricultural innovation investment on the impact of environmental regulation on agricultural green productivity growth in China. The research conclusions of this paper verify the 'Porter Hypothesis' theory in the field of agriculture, and have guiding significance for China to promote agricultural green productivity growth by relying on environmental regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]