Environmental Regulation Strategy Research Articles

Advanced game model of multi-agent environmental regulation strategy for sustainable production and consumption

Advanced game model of multi-agent environmental regulation strategy for sustainable production and consumption

Study on the Heterogeneity of Air Pollution Control in the Yangtze River Economic Belt

Environmental regulation is one of the most effective means of air pollution control. However, its heterogeneity is often neglected, which prevents in-depth study of the pollution control effects of environmental regulation and accurate and scientific control of air pollution. This paper studies the heterogeneity of the impact of environmental regulation on air pollution based on the data from 110 cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2011 to 2019. This includes pre-pollution environmental regulation, post-pollution environmental regulation, as well as the efficiency of controlling exhaust emission pollution and haze pollution. The study enhances the study of the impact of environmental regulation on air pollution. It is found that: (1) Environmental regulation presents a significant driving effect on the spatial transfer characteristics of air pollution, and pre-pollution environmental regulation is more effective in suppressing air pollution emissions. (2) The level of environmental regulation exhibits significant temporal and spatial stickiness, showing positive strategic interaction characteristics, and the degree of interaction of pre-pollution environmental regulation strategies is stronger. By studying the heterogeneity of the impact of environmental regulation on air pollution, this paper reveals the heterogeneity of environmental regulation for pollution control, including spatiotemporal heterogeneity and the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulation on different air pollutant types, which provides a reference for in-depth air pollution control in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

Spatial and temporal changes in microclimate affect disease distribution in two ancient tombs of Southern Tang Dynasty

Two tombs of the Southern Tang Dynasty (Qinling Tomb and Shunling Tomb), the most important cultural heritages in China, were built for emperors 1000 years ago and decorated with murals and stone sculptures. After their excavation in the 1950s, it was found that drastic fluctuations in the environment within the tombs had caused multiple diseases, such as salt efflorescence, powdering, and biodeterioration, which led to irreversible damage to the murals. This research comprised long-term (yearly) environmental monitoring and short-term (monthly) investigation into the distribution of salt crystallization and microbial growth within the two tombs. The objective was to unveil the relationship between the temporal and spatial distributions of the mural diseases and environmental characteristics while proposing a promising environmental regulation strategy for relic conservation. The results showed a gradual reduction in temperature fluctuation from the entrance to the back chamber and a distinct vertical stratification in relative humidity. The relative humidity in the upper areas of the tombs reached 100% during summer, while it averaged around 40–50% in the lower areas during winter. Consequently, significant condensation was observed on the ceiling in summer, whereas salt crystallization occurred on the murals in the lower space in winter. The distribution of these diseases was influenced by the airflow exchange between the interior and exterior. Furthermore, the structural disparities between the two tombs contributed to higher relative humidity and greater microorganism coverage in the Shunling Tomb compared to the Qinling Tomb. From the abovementioned findings, we suggest that microclimate control is essential for mitigating mural deterioration and should be paid more attention in the future.

Government environmental regulation strategy for new pollutants control in mariculture

The control of new pollutants in mariculture is a marine environmental policy direction. This paper constructs a three-party evolutionary game model containing fishermen, sales platforms and government to analyze government environmental regulation strategy for new pollutants in mariculture, then conduct numerical simulations based on survey data. The research conclusions are as follows. (1) As the probability of government regulation on mariculture's new pollutants increases, the probability of fishermen engaging in green mariculture and the platform purchasing green mariculture products both increases. (2) There is a role boundary of government mariculture green subsidies. As the total amount of mariculture green subsidies increases beyond a certain amount, its marginal incentive effect diminishes and the government will gradually stop providing mariculture green subsidies. (3) Government penalties can promote the control of new pollutants in mariculture. With the increase of penalties for new pollutants in mariculture, fishermen will gradually choose green farming and sales platforms will purchase green mariculture products. The conclusions will provide theoretical and practical guidelines for new pollutants control and government regulatory strategy in mariculture.

The Heterogeneous Effects of Formal and Informal Environmental Regulation on Green Technology Innovation—An Empirical Study of 284 Cities in China

Promoting green technology innovation (GTI) through environmental regulation is a key measure in reducing the severity of environmental problems. However, the effects of formal environmental regulation (FER) and informal environmental regulation (IER) on GTI have not been clarified. Through theoretical analysis, this paper analyzes the effects of FER and IER on GTI based on OLS and GTWR models. The results show the following: (1) In all Chinese cities, both FER and IER have had a positive impact on GTI. The impact of FER has been much stronger than that of IER. They show a linkage effect, and their interaction (TER) has had a positive impact on GTI. (2) In terms of spatial heterogeneity, the impact of FER, IER, and TER on GTI has decreased across the east-west gradient and has been supplemented by a core-periphery structure. (3) In terms of urban heterogeneity, the impact of FER, IER, and TER has decreased with the size of the city. This study has the potential to strengthen the effect of environmental regulation on GTI. It can provide a decision-making reference for cities to coordinate FER and IER strategies, and provides evidence for adopting regionally differentiated environmental regulation strategies.

Evolutionary game analysis of strategic interaction of environmental regulation among local governments

The effective implementation of environmental regulations is vital for constructing China's ecological civilization. From the perspective of local government competition, this paper constructs an evolutionary game model for the interaction of Chinese local government environmental regulation strategy. Then, the mechanism of local government environmental regulation competition and its influencing factors are explored. The results show that local governments are more inclined to relax environmental regulations when the losses of strengthening environmental regulations increase, which results in the race to the bottom in environmental regulation. However, environmental regulatory competition among local governments will be affected by externalities. In addition, adequate supervision by the superior government and an increase in the weight of environmental indicators in the performance appraisal system are conducive to the race to the top in environmental regulation among local governments. These research results can provide policy enlightenment for the central government to strengthen environmental supervision and win the battle against pollution.

An evolutionary game study of environmental regulation strategies for marine ecological governance in China

The choice of environmental regulation strategies for marine ecological pollution governance is vital for China’s promotion of collaborative marine ecological management. First, based on the assumption of limited rationality, we established a three-party evolutionary game model of China’s central government, local governments, and marine enterprises from the perspective of environmental policy to explore the dynamic evolution process of the game strategies of the three participants and the stability of the system equilibrium point. Second, we used numerical simulations to investigate how the incentive- and penalty-based policies of central and local governments have different effects on local governments and marine enterprises, respectively. Finally, we introduced a reputation loss model of public participation to explore the game strategy choices of the three parties under public participation. The finding reveal that (1) Local governments are more sensitive to the central government’s punishment policies than marine enterprises are. (2) Increasing the punishment of local governments on enterprises can simultaneously enhance the willingness of enterprises to govern and the willingness of local governments to implement. Moreover, the local governments policy of punishing enterprises was more direct and effective than that of the central government. (3) Although local governments subsidies for marine enterprises can increase their probability of governing marine ecology, they can also decrease local governments' willingness to implement. Finally, (4) Public participation can quickly promote the active governance of marine enterprises. Accordingly, the suggestions are proposed to maintain China's marine ecological security, e.g., the central government should focus on urging local governments to strictly implement marine environmental protection policies; local governments should take the lead in supervising and guiding marine enterprises; and all levels of government need to take measures to promote public participation in marine ecological governance.

Environmental decentralization, environmental regulation, and green technology innovation: evidence based on China.

The reform of the environmental management system and policy optimization is key to promoting green technology innovation. However, empirical studies on environmental monitoring decentralization are limited. As a result, this paper analyzes the impacts of environmental decentralization and environmental regulation on green technology innovation using China's 30 provincial administrative panel data ranging from 2008 to 2017. The study outcome denotes that environmental decentralization is not conducive to green technology innovation. Similar effects are also found for environmental administration decentralization, environmental supervision decentralization, and environmental monitoring decentralization. Secondly, there is a U-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and green technology innovation. With the strengthening of environmental administrative decentralization and environmental supervision decentralization, environmental regulation has a significant positive role in promoting green technology innovation. Furthermore, environmental decentralization reduces the inhibitory effect of environmental regulation on green technology innovation in the eastern and central regions. Environmental decentralization does not play a regulatory role in the impact of environmental regulation on green technology innovation in economically developed areas. Lastly, the impact of environmental regulation on green technology innovation shows significant threshold characteristics with the change in environmental decentralization, in which there is an optimal threshold interval for environmental decentralization. The study concluded with an important reference value for determining reasonable levels of environmental decentralization among different regions and improving relevant environmental regulation strategies.

Towards a win‐win situation for innovation and sustainable development: The role of environmental regulation

AbstractInnovation and sustainable development are important concerns for countries around the world, and strengthening environmental regulation (ER) may have a critical implication for the promotion of green technology innovation. On the basis of elaborating the mechanism of ER on technological innovation, the Super‐SBM‐Windows‐DEA model is employed to measure the green innovation efficiency (GIE) using provincial‐level panel data from 2004–2017 in China. The system generalised method of moments is used to estimate the direct effects of ER on GIE, an innovative mediating effect model that based on structural equation model is utilised to explore their indirect effects. Further, a spatial econometric model is developed to examine the possible spatial effects between ER and GIE. The ‘U’ shaped relationship between ER and GIE is verified in the direct effect test. The results of the indirect effects indicate that ER is not conducive to GIE by discouraging the inflows and outflows of FDI, while it contributes to GIE by promoting the structural upgrading of industry. The spatial effect results show that the impact of ER on GIE in neighbouring areas has an obvious spatial spillover characteristic, which is manifested as an inverted ‘U’‐shaped relationship of promotion followed by inhibition. The paper further proposes policy implications including strengthening cross‐regional joint prevention and control, integrating ER strategies, and rational application of ER tools, so as to promote a win‐win development of innovation and sustainability, and the positive effects of ER are better developed.

Multi-step short-term [Formula: see text]forecasting for enactment of proactive environmental regulation strategies.

Particulate matter is one of the key contributors of air pollution and climate change. Long-term exposure to constituents of air pollutants has exerted serious health implications in both humans and plants leading to a detrimental impact on economy. Among the pollutants contributing to air quality determination, particulate matter has been linked to serious health implications causing pulmonary complications, cardiovascular diseases, growth retardation and ultimately death. In agriculture, crop yield is also negatively impacted by the deposition of particulate matter on stomata of the plant which is alarming and can cause food security concerns. The deleterious impact of air pollutants on human health, agricultural and economic well-being highlights the importance of quantifying and forecasting particulate matter. Several deterministic and deep learning models have been employed in the recent years to forecast the concentration of particulate matter. Among them, deep learning models have shown promising results when it comes to modeling time series data and forecasting it. We have explored recurrent neural networks with LSTM model which shows potential to predict the particulate matter (PM_{2.5}) based on multi-step multi-variate data of two of the most polluted regions of South Asia, Beijing, China and Punjab, Pakistan effectively. The LSTM model is tuned using Bayesian optimization technique to employ the appropriate hyper-parameters and weight initialization strategies based on the dataset. The model was able to predict PM_{2.5} for the next hour with root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 0.1913 (91.5% accuracy) and this error gradually increases with the number of time steps with next 24 hours steps prediction having RMSE of 0.7290. While in case of Punjab dataset with data recorded once a day, the RMSE for the next day forecast is 0.2192. These multi-step short-term forecasts would play a pivotal role in establishing an early warning system based on the air quality index (AQI) calculated and enable the government in enacting policies to contain it.

Influence Mechanism and Evolutionary Game of Environmental Regulation on Green Port Construction

Ports are not only an important driving force for the growth of the world economy but also the main energy-consuming unit and pollution source in the world. Under the new global energy crisis and environmental deterioration situation, the international port community has put forward the concept of green port development. As a guide, the government’s environmental regulation strategy can directly affect green port construction through market incentive or command control means and can also indirectly affect green port construction through the intermediary role of green innovation, industrial agglomeration and green logistics. Considering the strategic choices of the government, port enterprises and transportation enterprises, this paper constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model and considers whether the government carrying out environmental regulation is affected by the fine income and management cost, whether the willingness of port enterprises to carry out green port construction is determined by the extra construction cost and income and whether transportation enterprises choose green port logistics transportation depending on the extra income they receive. In the process of tripartite cooperation, the government’s environmental regulation, port enterprises’ green port construction and transportation enterprises’ choice of the green port logistics transportation mode constitute the most ideal strategy combination. Finally, the paper puts forward some suggestions for the strategy selection of the three parties in order to promote the realization of the ideal strategy combination and provide a theoretical reference for the construction of green ports.

Implementation of environmental regulation strategies for nitrogen pollution in river basins: a stakeholder game perspective.

With the rapid development of modern agriculture, non-point source nitrogen pollution from higher polluting farms has become one of the main contributions to the eutrophication of the watershed. This paper first constructed a tripartite evolutionary game model concerning local governments, higher polluting farms, and consumers, all of which participate in the reduction of nitrogen pollution in the river basin. Secondly, the evolution process of evolutionary stability strategy (ESS) and the impact of critical parameters on the strategies of the three stakeholders were analyzed through numerical simulation. The results demonstrated that (1) six ESSs of the system are determined, only (1, 0, 1) is regarded as the most ideal ESS: regulation by local governments, higher polluting farms adopting not purchasing emission rights, and consumers purchasing green agricultural products. (2) The regulation strategy of local governments depends on comparing political losses with the sum of emission reduction subsidies and the supervision cost. (3) The marginal abatement costs, the price of nitrogen emission permits, nitrogen use efficiency, and the subsidy standard for unit emission reduction are the main factors that affect the ESS of higher polluting farms. (4) The ESS of consumers is significantly affected by low-nitrogen preference, government subsidies, and nitrogen use efficiency. This study suggests that the government should strengthen the supervision of the watershed environment from the aspects of improving the market mechanism of nitrogen trading, establishing a dynamic monitoring system, and innovating a subsidy mechanism.

High-Speed Railway Opening and High-Quality Development of Cities in China: Does Environmental Regulation Enhance the Effects?

The continuous improvement of transportation infrastructure is an important support for achieving high-quality development, while the high-quality characteristics of development will inevitably promote the process of economic and social sustainability. From the dual perspectives of economic transformation and people’s social livelihoods, we regard the opening of a high-speed railway (HSR) in China’s cities as a quasi-natural experiment, and utilize the difference-in-difference (DID) method to examine the impact of improved transportation infrastructure on the high-quality development of prefecture-level cities and its action mechanism. This study is the first to incorporate HSR openings and environmental regulation into the same framework, focusing on the high-quality development problem of cities. The empirical results reveal that: (1) the opening of an HSR can advance industrial structure upgrading and increase social employment level, thereby promoting the high-quality development of cities; (2) the intensity of environmental regulation is an important action mechanism that affects such relationships, but it presents two different influences on an HSR’s industrial effect and employment effect, that is, inhibition and reinforcement, respectively; and (3) urban heterogeneity tests illustrate that an HSR opening plays a more significant role in promoting the high-quality development of China’s eastern region cities and non-resource-based cities. Our findings are beneficial to improve the effectiveness and accuracy of decision-makers’ investment in transportation infrastructure as well as to facilitate the benign interaction between the national HSR policy and local environmental regulation strategies, thereby achieving the high-quality and sustainable development of urban economy and society.

The Impact of Economic Environmental Regulations on Industrial Firms' Technological Innovation - An Empirical Study Based on the Eastern Region

While enterprises continue to develop, they have caused certain damage to the ecological environment, and studies have shown that technological innovation is beneficial to the protection of the ecological environment. Can environmental regulations promote technological innovation? And does heterogeneity exist among different environmental regulations on technological innovation? These two questions are of great academic importance for guiding enterprises to achieve their technological innovation goals and promoting the government to formulate a unified and effective environmental regulation strategy. In this paper, based on the panel data of 13 provinces and cities in the eastern region of China from 2012-2021, regression analysis is conducted using STATA software to study the impact of economic-type environmental regulations on industrial enterprises' conducting technological innovation. The results show that: cost-based environmental regulations have a relatively obvious hindering effect on industrial enterprises to carry out technological innovation, and cannot effectively promote enterprises to sustain product and technological innovation within the system; investment-based environmental regulations have long-term benefits on industrial enterprises to carry out technological innovation, and can enhance the motivation of enterprises to carry out technological innovation.

Trafficking of a Tiger (Panthera tigris) in northeastern Mexico: A social network analysis

This study examines the possession of Tigers (Panthera tigris) as pets in Mexico through statistical analysis of governmental seizures on a period of 11 years, a review of socio-political factors related to this phenomenon and an analysis of a particular illicit supply network of a Tiger (P. tigris) specimen seized from a criminal group in northern Tamaulipas, Mexico. We found that socio-political factors such as the prohibition on the use of animals for circuses; environmental regulation strategies; the dominance of criminal groups in most of the Mexican territory and their traditional interest in exotic animals have an influence in the presence of tigers in private homes and ranches. This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of the possession of exotic animals, wildlife illegal networks and wildlife trafficking in Mexico.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Impact of PM2.5 environmental regulation based on big data for green technology development

China has received widespread attention in recent years due to the severe PM2.5 problem. Although paying close attention to the government, the government felt immense pressure to adopt a range of corrective measures and policies, but the impact of these measures and policies was not clear and citizens were not happy with the governance status of PM2.5. The biggest issue with PM2.5 management is the lack of environmental law enforcement. Many emerging technologies have arisen as a result of economic growth, and these technologies play a major role in gathering information and processing information and enhancing the quality of information. Therefore, we analyzes and explores the emerging ideas and approaches of these technologies and assesses the evolution of these technologies. It is obvious that the combination of big data technology and industrial green manufacturing technology is slow, and it is necessary to combine industrial green manufacturing enterprises and big data technology with artificial intelligence. In order to improve the current severe environmental problems, we have discussed technical advances and improved business efficiency such as development trend of green technology production based on big data technology, integration and innovation of big data technology and green technology, enriching environmental regulatory forms and participating entities, and PM2.5 environmental regulation strategy and recommendations for green technology advancement based on big data.

Evolutionary Game Analysis of Engineering Construction Innovation and Local Government Environmental Regulation Strategy

Recent years, with the development of China, an incessant springing up of major engineering projects. Based on the characteristics of the decentralization of local governments in China, whether there are local governments competing to set up major engineering projects at the expense of the environment in order to maintain local economic development. From the perspective of evolutionary game, this paper constructs a game model between engineering construction innovation and local government under the influence of local government’s choice of different environmental regulations. Through the dynamic replication equation, the behavior selection path and evolution strategy of local government and engineering construction firms are obtained. The research results show that the strict environmental regulation of local governments and the technological innovation of engineering construction firms can achieve stability at the same time, and the conditions are effective government investment by local governments.

Institutions for sustainability—Towards an expanded research program for ecological economics

Ecological economists are engaged in developing foundations for a sustainable future. To further develop our ability to deliver, I propose that we expand our analyses by a) drawing more on institutional theory and b) include also political processes in our research. The present political-economic system is unable to ensure sustainable futures. The paper argues that the root of the problem lies in its institutional structures. I illustrate possible changes to these that could take societies onto a sustainable development path. Focus here is on creating institutions able to strengthen the role of the future in decision-making. Here I focus on both political and economic institutions, illustrating how a change in these could ensure sustainability. I also discuss changes in environmental regulation strategies. The analyses of different options are used to illustrate what kind of studies are needed to advance sustainability. They form the basis for specifying directions that ecological economics could take to further support a necessary societal transformation process.

Implementation of a multi-agent environmental regulation strategy under Chinese fiscal decentralization: An evolutionary game theoretical approach

Evolutionary game theory (EGT) provides a powerful tool with which to unpack the interactive strategies of polluting enterprises (PEs), local government regulators (LG), and central government planners (CG) in China. Here, the prevailing institutional system of fiscal decentralization sees regulatory mandates set by the CG and enforced at the LG level. This delegation shapes managers' incentives when deciding the degree to which firms will incur costs to reduce pollution and comply with state directives. Manager's choice sets draw shape from decisions at the LG level, where regulators balance the pursuit of environmental quality with the economic payoffs of tacit collusion with industry. LG and PEs incentives reciprocally shape and draw shape from outcomes at the CG level, where policymakers decide the degree to which they will support and supervise the behavior of LGs. By exploring the evolution of different participants' behavior and their evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) in line with the duplication of dynamic equations, EGT enables a robust, quantitative analysis of this iterative, interactive, three-player game. A numerical example serves to verify the theoretical results and support four key insights. First, the selection of environmental strategies manifest in a dynamic process of constant adjustment and optimization. Second, LGs outperform by integrating decisions from both CG and PEs in weighing alternative environmental strategies. Third, reducing regulatory costs at the CG level cascades to strengthen penalties for local violations and improve mitigation incentives in ways that aid an evolutionary game to converge on an ideal decision state. Fourth, a stable equilibrium cannot persist to allow LGs to sustain behaviors towards a “race to the bottom”, even in the total absence of central regulation or high levels of dominance of polluting firms of LG regulators. EGT thus not only outcomes shed light on the full variation set of game outcomes, it also reveals the consequences of variable levels of collusion between LGs and PEs and options for the redesign of incentive mechanisms to reform the regulatory regime and improve market outcomes in China.

Modelling Rail-Based Park and Ride with Environmental Constraints in a Multimodal Transport Network

Environmental sustainability is a significant aspect in the sustainable development of modern urban cities, especially in the road transport system. As traffic demands increase, public transport requires more promotion to accommodate the increasing travel demands while maintaining the environmental quality. Public transport, however, is less attractive in vast suburb areas mainly due to its longer travel distance and waiting time. Therefore, this paper proposes a rail-based Park-and-Ride (RPR) scheme to promote public transport in the multimodal transport network. To remedy the heterogeneous distribution of vehicle pollutants in the network, regulations in environmental sensitive districts are required and studied in this paper. To quantitatively evaluate and analyse this joint RPR and environmental regulation strategy in multimodal transport systems, this paper develops an environmental constrained combined modal split and traffic assignment (EC-CMSTA) model. The proposed formulation adopts the concept of fix-point to reformulate the nonlinear complementarity conditions associated with the combined modal split and user equilibrium conditions, which is subsequently incorporated into a VI formulated nonlinear complementarity conditions associated with environmental constraints. The proposed VI formulation can handle a general constraint structure, which enhances the modelling adaptability and flexibility. The strictly monotone and Lipschitz continuity properties of this model are rigorously proved, giving rise to efficient algorithms for the model. A customized projection based self-adaptive gradient projection (SAGP) algorithm is then developed. Numerical studies demonstrate that the EC-MSTA model could enhance the behavioural modelling of network users’ travel decisions and assist in quantitatively evaluating the effectiveness of RPR schemes and environmental regulations.