Suchergebnisse

Based on the perspective of urban agglomerations, this paper explores the impact mechanism of environmental regulation on haze, and tries to find the most suitable environmental regulation intensity for haze control in urban agglomerations. This paper uses the fixed-effect model and panel threshold model to verify the effect of environmental regulations on haze concentration in 206 cities in China. A grouping test is also conducted to verify whether a regional heterogeneity arises due to different regional development levels for five urban agglomerations and non-five urban agglomerations, respectively. The results show that: (1) In the linear model, strengthening environmental regulation can reduce the haze concentration, but this effect is not significant. The effect of environmental regulation on haze control in the five major urban agglomerations is better than that in the non-five major urban agglomerations; (2) In the nonlinear model, the impact of environmental regulation on haze shows a "U" trend in the five major urban agglomerations and an inverted "U" trend in the non-five major urban agglomerations. Although the results are not significant, we can still conclude that the impact of environmental regulation on haze varies depending on the level of regional economic development. Therefore, the environmental regulation should be formulated according to local conditions; (3) In the threshold model, the impact of environmental regulation on the haze concentration in five major urban agglomerations has a threshold effect. In the five major urban agglomerations, although environmental regulation can effectively reduce haze concentration, the governance effect will weaken as the environmental regulation increases. This study plays a positive role in guiding local governments to adjust environmental regulation intensity according to local conditions and helping local environmental improvement.

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 SO(2) 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 SO(2) 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 SO(2) 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.