Can Forest Resource Endowment Drive Green Economic Growth in the Context of the Low-Carbon Economy in China?

Abstract

Continuous climate change has become one of the challenges faced by the world, drawing much attention from governments. The forest industry is the main focus of strategic initiatives to realize a circular and green economy and achieve low emissions. In order to explore the relationship between forest resource endowment and green economic growth, this study represents the first attempt to verify how forest resource endowment affects green economic growth (GEG), with a theoretical analysis and an explanation of the effects of both. The following results were obtained: (1) The GEG of the lagging period can improve the GEG of the current period in all regions, which verifies the sustainability of GEG in China. (2) The regression coefficient of forest resource endowment is a negative primary term (except for the eastern region) and a positive quadratic term, indicating that there is a U-shaped nonlinear relationship between forest resource endowment and GEG in the national, central, and western regions. (3) Forest resource endowments inhibit green economic growth by crowding out human capital from high-tech industries and through such effects as “Dutch disease”. The elasticity coefficient of the eastern region is positive but insignificant, while the forest resource inhibition effect is larger in the central and western regions, but the elasticity coefficient is significantly lower for the central region than the western region. (4) Human capital significantly contributes to GEG in the east and has a negative effect on GEG in the nation and the central and western regions. A possible reason for this is that there are more highly qualified people in the east than in the central and western regions; environmental regulation inhibits GEG in the nation and the east and has a negative but insignificant effect on GEG in the central and western regions, whereas green finance can promote GEG in all regions, and its promotion effect is highest in the east and lowest in the west, where it does not pass the significance test.