Environmental Governance Efficiency Research Articles

Analysis on the relationship among green finance, government environmental governance and green economic efficiency: evidence from China

Analysis on the relationship among green finance, government environmental governance and green economic efficiency: evidence from China

Is environmental regulation conducive to the reduction of residents’ health costs? – evidence from the Chinese Family Panel Survey

BackgroundIn response to environmental degradation and the associated health challenges, the Chinese government has implemented a comprehensive array of environmental protection measures. Given the health enhancement objective of environmental protection measures and the considerable costs involved in the implementation process, evaluating whether environmental regulation is beneficial to reducing the health costs of the population is of great significance for enhancing environmental governance efficiency and social welfare. The data from the Chinese Family Panel Survey (CFPS) is applied to examine the effect of environmental regulation on the reduction of residents’ health costs from a microscopic perspective.ResultsThe results indicate that for a 1% increase in total investment in environmental governance, residents’ health costs will decrease by 0.189%. The examination of the causal pathway suggests that implementing environmental regulation can diminish residents’ health costs through improving air quality and residents’ health status. Concurrently, there exist significant heterogeneities in the role of environmental regulation in reducing residents’ health costs. The effect of environmental regulation is more pronounced for the young, males, and individuals with better self-perceived health. Furthermore, the outcome of environmental regulation exhibits greater efficacy in urban areas compared to rural areas. Lastly, market-incentive environmental regulation in reducing health costs is more effective than command-controlled regulation.ConclusionsEnhancing the intensity of environmental regulation contributes to decreasing residents’ health costs. The findings can provide policy reference for implementing environmental governance and achieving tangible enhancements in individuals' life quality.

Is More Always Better? Government Attention and Environmental Governance Efficiency: Empirical Evidence from China

In recent years, the thorough implementation of China’s green development concept has compelled local governments to devote more attention to environmental issues. This study aimed to verify whether increased government environmental attention (GEA) can sustainably ensure the implementation of environmental governance, particularly air pollution control. Using government work reports (GWRs) from local governments, this study employed machine learning methods to identify and quantify the attitudes of government officials as expressed in policy texts. A weighted dictionary method was used to quantify GEA from 2011 to 2016. The results of spatial econometric models indicated that air pollution exhibited positive spatial clustering effects across different regions, with the Yangtze River Delta and the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region being classified as high–high areas, while the western regions were classified as low–low areas. Baseline regression results showed that increased GEA can improve the effectiveness of pollution control, but excessive attention leads to a decline in governance efficiency. Overall, this study helps explain the unsustainability of campaign-style environmental governance and provides guidance for local governments on the rational allocation of attention when addressing environmental issues.

Conflict or coordination? The cross-departmental interaction in local environmental governance of China

Organizational coordination has been regarded as a vital factor to determine the environmental governance efficiency of local authority, while existing empirical studies mainly discuss the vertical decentralization but largely ignore the horizontal cross-departmental interaction within single government. Based on the data of 31 Chinese provinces from 2003 to 2017, this paper uses a panel vector autoregression (PVAR) approach, two-way fixed-effect models and dynamic panel regression with system generalized method of moments estimation (SYS-GMM) to investigate the environmental strategic interaction between two representative departments (finance department and environmental protection department) within local governments. The results indicate, on the whole, their environmental governance strategies show a significantly co-directional coordination. However, the cross-departmental interaction obviously varied in different periods and regions (even showed as conflict sometimes), and was synchronized with the dynamic trade-off between economic and environmental targets of China. This research helps understand the inner logic of environmental governance of Chinese government, and can be valuable guidance for other countries to accomplish multi-departmental sustainable development goal.

Can the natural resource balance sheet system promote ecological civilization? --Empirical evidence from panel data of prefecture-level cities in China

As a crucial carrier of natural resource and environmental information, the natural resources balance sheet is important in enhancing ecological governance capabilities and advancing ecological civilization construction. Utilizing panel data from Chinese prefecture cities spanning 2012 to 2018, we employ a Difference-in-Differences (DID) model to examine the policy effects of the natural resources balance sheet system. The findings indicate that compiling the natural resources balance sheet significantly promotes local ecological civilization construction, and local government environmental governance efficiency partially mediates this relationship. Further analysis indicates that the outgoing audit of natural resources and public environmental concern positively moderates the relationship between the two. Drawing on the principal-agent theory, we provide in-depth analysis and elucidation of the mechanisms through which the natural resources balance sheet promotes ecological civilization construction, offering theoretical guidance and empirical data support for strengthening the compilation and application of the natural resources balance sheet.

Analysis the Influence of Good Corporate Governance, Environmental Social Governance, Financial Strength, and Operational Efficiency on Financial Performance: Study of Energy Companies Listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange on 2016-2022

Analysis the Influence of Good Corporate Governance, Environmental Social Governance, Financial Strength, and Operational Efficiency on Financial Performance: Study of Energy Companies Listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange on 2016-2022

The Impact of Intergovernmental Cooperation and Local Fiscal Autonomy on Environmental Regional Governance: Evidence From China Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration

Previous research on regional environmental pollution acknowledge that cross-level government cooperation plays an important role in controlling regional environmental pollution. However, the balance between local fiscal autonomy and governance costs has received little attention. To fill this research gap, this paper argues a model of local fiscal autonomy moderating the efficiency of environmental governance, which provides a basis for studying the effect of local fiscal autonomy on intergovernmental cooperative environmental governance. We collected the data set of the China Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, using Tobit regression model to evaluate the effect of local fiscal autonomy on cooperative arrangements and the moderating effect. The results show that higher local fiscal autonomy will positively affect vertical intervention actions and improve the efficiency of environmental governance. In addition, we found that more special funding for environmental projects will weaken the performance of horizontal cooperation on regional environmental governance.

RESEARCH ON THE INTERNAL MOTIVATION OF GREEN INNOVATION IN ENTERPRISES

This paper mainly establishes the internal driving model of enterprises' green innovation behavior, deeply studies the internal factors that affect enterprises' green innovation, and analyzes its influencing mechanisms. Based on the theories of planned behavior, reputation theory, and political promotion championship theory, this paper deeply explores the internal driving factors and influencing relationships of corporate green innovation behavior from the perspective of micro-research within enterprises and further examines the characteristics of enterprises such as enterprise size, enterprise nature, and industry attributes. This paper explores whether there is a moderating effect on the internal driving force of green innovation behavior.
 The results show that: (1) the motivation of enterprises to avoid environmental penalties, the motivation to obtain environmental protection honors, and the motivation for political promotion of senior executives of state-owned enterprises all have a promoting effect on the green innovation behavior of enterprises; (2) In state-owned enterprises, the motivation for avoiding environmental penalties, the motivation for obtaining environmental protection honors, and the motivation for executive promotion have a better positive impact on green innovation than that of non-state-owned enterprises. The conclusions of this study broaden the research perspective of the related fields of green innovation behavior, enrich the theoretical research scope of the influencing factors of corporate green innovation behavior, and enrich the relevant research on the influence of enterprise characteristics on corporate behavior. It will help to improve the scientific formulation of supervision and incentive mechanisms by government managers, provide methods for enterprises to improve the efficiency of environmental governance, and also help the public to recognize and understand the internal influencing factors of corporate green innovation, providing a new perspective for social supervision.

Does the digital economy reduce air pollution? Evidence from 30 Chinese provinces and municipalities

ABSTRACT Our study aims to investigate whether and how the development of the digital economy can reduce air pollutant emissions in China. Specifically, using a fixed effect model and an empirical test that exploits pollutant emissions in 30 Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2020, we explore the impact of digital economy development on air pollution through three mechanisms: public attention to environmental pollution, production efficiency, and environmental governance efficiency. Additionally, we provide heterogeneity analysis based on regions, industrial structure, and years of schooling. Findings are crucial for policymakers and environmentalists concerned about economic development’s effects on the environment.

New way out of efficiency-equity dilemma: Digital technology empowerment for local government environmental governance

Getting out of the dilemma of incompatibility between efficiency and equity is an important goal of local government to modernize their environmental governance. Based on the theory of public value management, this paper constructs an analytical framework for digital technology enabled government environmental governance under the perspectives of efficiency, equity and coupling of the two, then empirically examines the impact and mechanism. The results show that digital technology can enhance efficiency and equity of local government environmental governance. Meanwhile, digital technology is an effective way to solve conflict between efficiency and equity values, but its green effect may be weakened in the short term due to uncertainty risks of internet. Education can strengthen green effect of digital technology, and digital dividend is especially beneficial when years of education has reached a certain threshold. In addition, there are heterogeneity and spatial correlation in digital technology to improve local government environmental governance. Finally, the results of mechanism test show that digital technology realizes enabling effect through three paths: industrial structure optimization effect, social public participation effect and innovation and entrepreneurship effect. The findings of this paper enrich research literatures on government environmental governance empowered by digital technology, and also provide useful references for formulation and implementation of government environmental policies under the new development pattern.

Analysis of spatial correlation characteristics and key factors of regional environmental governance efficiency in China

Analysis of spatial correlation characteristics and key factors of regional environmental governance efficiency in China

Two-Way FDI Synergy and Water Environmental Management Efficiency—An Empirical Study on the Mediating Effect of Heterogeneous Technological Innovation

In the context of China’s synergistic development of import and export strategies and water environmental protection, this paper analyzes the role of two-way FDI synergistic development in water environmental governance efficiency based on panel data of 30 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China from 2004 to 2021. The paper uses a fixed effect model and analyzes the role of heterogeneous technological innovation using the mediation effect model and the panel threshold model. The results of the study show the following: (1) overall, two-way FDI synergistic development helps to improve China’s water environmental governance efficiency; (2) there is regional heterogeneity in the effect of two-way FDI synergistic development on China’s water environmental governance efficiency, with a significant positive effect in areas along the coast and with high FDI synergistic development levels and an inhibitory effect in inland areas; and (3) the two-way FDI synergy enhances the efficiency of China’s water environmental governance by improving the levels of independent innovation and imitation innovation.

Does regional collaborative governance reduce air pollution? Quasi-experimental evidence from China

Regional collaborative governance has become one of the most significant trends in environmental protection due to its importance in suppressing pollution transfer. This paper employs panel data from 285 cities in China during 2003–2019 and a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) method to evaluate the influence of regional collaborative governance on air pollution. Results show that regional collaborative governance significantly reduces air pollution. Heterogeneity assessment suggests that the inhibiting impact of regional collaborative governance on air pollution is long-term and increases temporally, whereas the spillover effect of regional collaborative governance is only significant in a specific range and decays spatially. In addition, the mechanism analysis reveals that regional collaborative governance reduces air pollution by increasing environmental regulation intensity, improving environmental governance efficiency, and promoting environmental protection technology. This study provides useful policy insights for policymakers seeking green and sustainable development to curb air pollution and improve environmental quality.

The impact of anti‐corruption on environmental governance efficiency in China: A study based on spatial effect

AbstractAnti‐corruption is an important initiative in China's national governance system. The existing literature usually studies the direct impact of corruption or anti‐corruption on China's environment, while few studies show the spatial correlation impact of anti‐corruption on China's environmental governance. This paper redefines anti‐corruption, uses panel data of 30 Chinese provinces and cities from 2005 to 2019, and empirically analyzes the impact of anti‐corruption on environmental governance efficiency in China using spatial Durbin model. The findings indicate that the direct effect of anti‐corruption on environmental governance efficiency is positive, indicating that increasing anti‐corruption efforts will help improve local environmental governance efficiency; indirect effect of anti‐corruption on environmental governance efficiency is negative, suggesting that due to the existence of “pollution heaven” effect, the strengthening of anti‐corruption in the local region will cause polluting industries to move from local region to neighboring regions, leading to serious environmental pollution in the neighboring regions, and then reducing environmental governance efficiency. The indirect effect of economic development, industrial structure, and economic openness are negative, while the indirect effect of urbanization rate and clean energy are positive. The findings of the study provide a theoretical basis and insight for governments at all levels to improve environmental governance efficiency through anti‐corruption.

The impact of globalization on comprehensive environmental efficiency and its sub‐stage efficiencies: An adjusted range adjusted measure network data envelopment analysis model approach

AbstractGlobalization is a worldwide trend, and environmental governance requires global cooperation. There are environmental issues caused by globalization, such as “environmental justice” and “externalization of cost.” However, several key questions remain about the impact of globalization on the environment. This article attempts to decompose the comprehensive environmental efficiency and analyze their inner relationship its determinants. This study adopts range adjusted measure network data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to measure the overall efficiency and decompose comprehensive efficiency into two stages and investigate the interrelationship among them, based on the data from 30 cities along the Yangtze River. This can reveal the “black box” of the DEA and the interrelationship between each stage. The panel quantile method is adopted to analyze the impact of influencing factors, especially globalization, on efficiency. This article creatively builds the in‐depth openness index to measure the tendency of in‐depth openness. The following findings are identified: (1) Among sub‐stages, environmental governance efficiency plays a more significant role in comprehensive environmental efficiency. (2) Foreign direct investment, urbanization, and industrial structure negatively influence efficiency, while the degree of openness, per capita GDP, and population density are positive determinants. (3) With the decrease of the HUANG index, the impact of globalization on the local environment shifted from supporting the pollution halo hypothesis toward supporting the pollution haven hypothesis. (4) Sustainability with harmony between humans and nature is recommended and can be achieved. The result of this study can help policymakers to find an effective way to achieve sustainability and improve the environmental efficiency effectively.

Regional Differences in PM2.5 Environmental Efficiency and Its Driving Mechanism in Zhejiang Province, China

Improving the digital economy and environmental governance efficiency are important methods for current high-quality economic development. Based on the panel data of 11 cities in Zhejiang, on the eastern coast of China, fine particulate matter smaller than a 2.5 μm (PM2.5) environmental efficiency (PMEE) was measured by the undesirable output Slack-Based Measure-Data Envelopment Analysis (SBM-DEA) model. The fixed effect regression model, the divergences in the difference model and other empirical methods were obtained to test the driving mechanism of social-economic factors on the PMEE. The results showed that: (1) the concentration of PM2.5 was continually decreasing, and environmental quality experienced a continuous improvement in Zhejiang province in the observation period, although cities such as Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Shaoxing have relatively severe PM2.5 pollution. (2) The total average value of PMEE in Zhejiang was 0.6430 over the observation period, while there was still a lot of room for improvement when compared to the production frontier. Additionally, PMEE in each city showed a fluctuating growth trend. Cities with a higher PMEE were mainly Zhoushan, Hangzhou and Ningbo. (3) The level of the digital economy had a positive role in promoting the PMEE, which was statistically significant. The level of pollution control and technological innovation also had a significantly positive effect. However, the ratio of the industrial output value to the gross domestic product (GDP) presented a negative effect on the PMEE. In the future, it is suggested that the development of the urban digital economy should be accelerated in an all-around way to improve the efficiency of government pollution control and to improve the technical efficiency of PM2.5 via innovative technological progress.

Efficiency Calculation and Evaluation of Environmental Governance Using the Theory of Production, Life, and Ecology Based on Panel Data from 27 Provinces in China from 2003 to 2020

Promoting green development and promoting harmonious coexistence between humans and nature are strategic tasks for the construction of ecological civilization in China in the new era. Currently, the growing environmental governance investment in China has not performed well, and the low efficiency of environmental governance has become the main problem facing the development of ecological civilization in China. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to scientifically measure the efficiency of environmental governance and improve the efficiency of environmental governance input factors to achieve green development and overcome the difficulties in the construction of ecological civilization. In this study, an improved three-stage SBM model and cloud model combined with the Theory of production, life, and ecology were used to measure the environmental governance efficiency of 27 provinces in China from 2003 to 2020 and conduct in-depth analysis and evaluation. The results show that: First, the influence of random error factors and external environmental conditions on the efficiency of rural domestic sewage treatment in China is significant. Their existence will underestimate the environmental governance efficiency in the central and western regions of China and overestimate the environmental governance efficiency in the eastern regions of China, except for Hainan Province. Second, after excluding the influence of random errors and external environment conditions, the adjusted efficiency mean value of the central and western regions significantly increases, while the environmental governance efficiency of most provinces in the eastern region, except for Hainan Province, decreases significantly. Third, the overall environmental governance efficiency of the 27 provinces in China still presents a situation wherein the western region is ranked first in efficiency, the eastern region ranks second, and the central region ranks third. The environmental governance efficiency of the 27 provinces shows a “large at both ends, small in the middle” and “low efficiency in the eastern and central regions, and instability in the western region” state, and there is a large difference in the degree of environmental governance efficiency among the various provinces. In this regard, for the eastern and central regions, special attention should be paid to their government’s transformation of development thinking, placing greater emphasis on balanced and coordinated development between urbanization, industrialization, and the environment. As for the western region, due to its harsh environmental conditions, it attaches more importance to environmental governance. However, efforts should be made to strengthen its economic development to ensure sufficient provision of material conditions such as infrastructure and equipment required for environmental governance in order to achieve stable environmental governance efficiency in the western region. For the central region, both the economy and the environment need to be further strengthened.

Surveillance of public risk perceptions on outdoor air pollution: evidence from online search behaviours in China

Severe outdoor air pollution in China has long constituted a threat to public health and environmental governance efficiency. Surveillance of online search behaviours that reflect real-time public risk perception and behavioural responses on environmental issues is essential in improving environmental governance. However, owing to the absence of an appropriate analytical framework, quantitative evidence of analysing online data is scarce in the extant research. To address this research gap, we analysed Baidu search indexes (BSI) keywords relevant to the public risk perception and behavioural responses on outdoor air pollution by a surveillance framework consisting of two parallel steps (prediction and monitoring). The proposed framework may improve environmental risk governance efficiency and benefit environmental risk governance policy decision-making through considering real-time public risk perceptions and behavioural response information. Using online search behaviour data, this study adds to the methodology for improving the efficacy of environmental social risk governance.

Achieving Harmony between the Economy and the Environment

Rather than attempting to balance the environment with the economy (i.e., a zero-sum game), a theoretically better long-term approach would be to achieve harmonious development in which both the environment and the economy benefit. To provide insights into this suggestion, we analyzed the relationships between environmental quality and economic development in China through a threshold regression model based on panel data from 292 cities from 2007 to 2018. We found that the relationship between environmental quality and economic development represented a negative interaction before or after the relationship passed through a zone of temporary balance, but that attaining a high urbanization level (in this case study, 81.0%) could improve the efficiency and capital utilization rate of environmental governance and change the impact from negative to positive, thereby achieving harmonious development rather than a zero-sum game. The government should therefore take measures to increase urbanization so as to achieve more harmonious development of the environment and economy (i.e., a win–win situation).

The Interaction Mechanism of Fiscal Pressure, Local Government Behavioral Preferences and Environmental Governance Efficiency: Evidence from the Yangtze River Delta Region of China

In environmental governance, local governments are the main actors, and their behavioral preferences between economic growth competition (EGC) and environmental regulation (ER) affect the inputs and outputs of environmental governance. Most studies discuss the relationship between government behaviors and the environment from the fiscal decentralization perspective, with few studies from the fiscal pressure (FP) perspective. Importantly, the bidirectional interaction mechanism is easily ignored. This study measured local government FP, EGC, ER, and environmental governance efficiency (EGE) in China's Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region from 2000 to 2020. Moran's I index was used to identify the change characteristics of local government behavioral preferences. The interaction mechanism was analyzed by a panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model. The results show that (1) from 2000 to 2020, FP was generally strengthened. EGE generally showed fluctuating and rising change characteristics, with more obvious fluctuating and rising characteristics before 2012 and after 2012, respectively. Local governments shifted from a strong alternative preference to a weak synergistic preference. (2) FP had a self-reinforcing effect. EGC and ER had a self-weakening effect. EGE had not only a self-weakening effect but also a weak self-dependence. (3) There is a double negative interaction mechanism between FP and local government behavioral preferences. FP made local governments prefer to reduce EGC and relax ER, but in fact, EGC and ER were conducive to alleviating FP. (4) There is a negative transitive influence mechanism between FP, local government behavioral preferences and EGE. The negative effect of FP on EGE can be transmitted by reducing EGC and ER. This paper provides a scientific basis for improving EGE in the YRD region and understanding the behavioral logic of local governments' environmental governance and a reference for other rapidly industrializing and urbanizing regions.