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The issue of environmental governance has received considerable attention. While extensive research focuses on the relationship between economic growth and environmental protection, this paper provides a different perspective by exploring the mechanisms affecting the relationship between land-based revenue and environmental performance. Based on the regression analyses of province-level data during 2000-2018 in China, the results show that: (1) land-based finance has a significantly positive impact on air pollution; (2) both central government policies and local residents' concerns incentivize local governments to improve environmental quality through land revenue; (3) regional differences exist regarding the impact of these two factors, probably due to various development stages and financial conditions; (4) local governments tend to increase expenditure on environmental protection by taking residents' concerns into consideration. This research contributes to understanding the driving forces behind the relationship between land finance and environmental performance, and it extends our knowledge of local governments' decision-making processes to accomplish multiple tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how industrial land is spatially allocated across regions is crucial for formulating more optimised land policies and regional development strategies, especially in industrialising countries. By exploiting a unique county-level cadastral dataset covering the whole China from 2009 to 2018, this paper analyzes the spatiotemporal allocation of industrial land and the potential spatial mismatch in China. We find that industrial land constituted the largest single type of urban land use in China (27%) and its absolute area and allocative share expanded during the period 2009–2018. Both the incremental and the stock of the industrial land were mainly concentrated in the coastal metropolitan regions but with a greater tendency to allocate more industrial land in inland regions. Further, we provide robust evidence of the existence of a spatial mismatch of industrial land allocation across Chinese counties, although the efficiency of regional allocations did not deteriorate over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]