Search

Based on the perspective of urban agglomerations, this paper explores the impact mechanism of environmental regulation on haze, and tries to find the most suitable environmental regulation intensity for haze control in urban agglomerations. This paper uses the fixed-effect model and panel threshold model to verify the effect of environmental regulations on haze concentration in 206 cities in China. A grouping test is also conducted to verify whether a regional heterogeneity arises due to different regional development levels for five urban agglomerations and non-five urban agglomerations, respectively. The results show that: (1) In the linear model, strengthening environmental regulation can reduce the haze concentration, but this effect is not significant. The effect of environmental regulation on haze control in the five major urban agglomerations is better than that in the non-five major urban agglomerations; (2) In the nonlinear model, the impact of environmental regulation on haze shows a "U" trend in the five major urban agglomerations and an inverted "U" trend in the non-five major urban agglomerations. Although the results are not significant, we can still conclude that the impact of environmental regulation on haze varies depending on the level of regional economic development. Therefore, the environmental regulation should be formulated according to local conditions; (3) In the threshold model, the impact of environmental regulation on the haze concentration in five major urban agglomerations has a threshold effect. In the five major urban agglomerations, although environmental regulation can effectively reduce haze concentration, the governance effect will weaken as the environmental regulation increases. This study plays a positive role in guiding local governments to adjust environmental regulation intensity according to local conditions and helping local environmental improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental regulations of different intensities may have different impacts on polluting enterprises. The purpose of this article is to analyze how different environmental regulations affect the pollution discharge strategies of papermaking enterprises. By establishing an evolutionary game model between the government environmental regulation intensities and the pollutant emissions from papermaking enterprises, this thesis further solves the model and performs stability analysis and finally uses MATLAB to conduct simulation studies. And the researching results show that papermaking enterprises will take risks to choose the illegal pollutant discharge strategies when the illegal profits are large. Further analysis shows that the increase in the successful probability of the strong environmental regulations does not necessarily force papermaking enterprises to choose to comply with pollution discharge regulations. However, papermaking enterprises may choose to comply with discharge pollution regulations not only by increasing the successful probability of strong environmental regulations but also by increasing the rewards and punishments for papermaking enterprises as well as by increasing the probability of reporting violations of pollutants. Based on the above results, the author proposes several countermeasures, such as establishing a specialized pollution monitoring agency, encouraging third-party supervision, reporting pollution behaviors, and increasing penalties for polluting companies for violations. China is in a critical period of transition from rapid development to high-quality development. It will provide some reliable references for the construction of a green economy and an ecological economy that the characteristics and relationships between the intensity of government environmental regulations and corporate pollution emissions revealed in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the constraints of resources and the environment, exploring the channels to improve the quality of China's economy is very important for China's current sustainable development. Therefore, this paper studies whether innovation can improve the quality of China's economy and explore the path of sustainable development from the perspective of the city. Based on the Malmquist–Luenberger index and DEA-Malmquist index, this paper, respectively, measures the green total factor productivity (GTFP) and total factor productivity (TFP) of 193 cities in China. On the basis of obtaining the GTFP, TFP, and various pollutant emissions of 193 cities, this paper selects environmental regulations as the threshold variable and the number of urban patents as the explanatory variable to measure the level of urban innovation. On this basis, we examine the impact of innovation quality on economic quality and environmental pollution under different environmental regulatory intensities. The research results show that the impact of innovation on GTFP and TFP under different environmental regulations is always positive, but the impact coefficient and significance level vary. In addition, the impact of innovation on SO2 emissions under different environmental regulations has also changed. With the increase of environmental regulations, the effect of reducing emissions is gradually significant. The conclusion of this paper better interprets the development of TFP and GTFP under the innovation-driven strategy, provides a decision-making basis for departments at all levels to formulate innovation support policies, and explores the path of sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]