Temporal–Spatial Evolution, Influencing Factors, and Driving Mechanisms of Environmental Regulation Performance Disparities: Evidence from China

Abstract

Countries worldwide are facing ecological crises, and improving global ecological quality through environmental regulations is key to achieving sustainable development. As the largest developing country, China’s response to diverse ecological conflicts in different regions through environmental regulations considerably impacts global ecological conservation. Based on 2008–2020 panel data from 30 provinces, this study measures the spatial distribution patterns and time-series evolutionary trends in environmental regulation performance differences using the entropy weight method and the Theil index model. Quadratic assignment procedure and qualitative comparative analysis models were combined to explore the determinants and driving mechanisms of differences in environmental regulation performance. The results show that the prevalent uneven development of environmental regulations and disparities in regulation performance mainly originate from inter-regional differences. Political factors affecting performance differences include decision value and decision decentralization; administrative factors are command-based regulations; and rule-of-law factors include project, financial, and subject regulation. Furthermore, these three factor types can interact to form eight high environmental regulation performance paths and seven non-high environmental regulation paths, which together constitute the driving mechanism for performance differences. This study enriches the theoretical understanding of environmental regulation performance differences from the public management perspective, which can guide environmental regulation policy optimization and promote high-level, balanced environmental development.