Abstract
Improvement of green total factor productivity (GTFP) through environmental regulation is of great practical significance in promoting the high-quality development of urban economies. Based on panel data for 163 cities in China from 2003 to 2016, five indicators were selected to quantify the effects of environmental regulation: the SO2 removal rate, smoke and dust removal rate, solid waste utilization rate, domestic sewage treatment rate, and waste harmless treatment rate. This study evaluated the impact of environmental regulation on urban GTFP, and analyzed the threshold effect of urban economic development levels. The research results showed that the impact of environmental regulations on GTFP changed as the level of urban economic development increases. When the economic development level was low, environmental regulation had a significant positive effect on GTFP, especially the SO2 removal rate. When the economy developed to reach a medium level, the impact of environmental regulation on GTFP was negative. When the economic development level was high, the SO2 removal rate still had a significant positive impact on GTFP. The solid waste utilization rate had a significant negative impact on GTFP. It was concluded that the government should consider the local economic development level when formulating environmental regulation policies.
Highlights
Background and Introduction great achievements have been made in China’s urban economic development, problems of resource shortages and environmental deterioration have emerged [1].In recent years, haze and water pollution issues have occurred in most Chinese cities
When the ML index is greater than 1, it means that the green total factor productivity (GTFP) of the year has increased compared to the previous year, and vice versa, it has decreased compared with the previous year, which directly affects the trend of GTFP
Since 2007, there has been a slight decline in the middle, GTFP has shown an upward trend as a whole
Summary
Great achievements have been made in China’s urban economic development, problems of resource shortages and environmental deterioration have emerged [1]. The “pollution paradise hypothesis” mainly means that enterprises in pollution-intensive industries tend to be established in countries or regions with relatively low environmental standards [19] They found that after the improvement of local environmental regulations, pollution-intensive enterprises would transfer to other areas to avoid the high production costs, and the transfer would reduce the local GTFP to a certain extent [20]. Naso et al [24] reported that the enhancement of environmental regulation intensity would “force” enterprises to increase research and development (R&D) in terms of energy consumption and emission reduction In this way, the competitiveness of enterprises could be improved to promote the urban GTFP [25,26,27]. The third contribution: this article examines the impact of environmental regulations on GTFP under different economic levels This can help city managers formulate more targeted strategies to help improve the city’s GTFP and take the path of sustainable development. The remaining chapters of this paper are arranged as follows: Section 2 is the research design, which includes the model design and variable selection; Section 3 presents the analysis of the empirical results; Section 4 is the discussion and the conclusion to provide suggestions for further study
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