An empirical analysis on the impact of environmental regulations on pork trade: evidence from China

This paper uses the gravity model to examine the effect of environmental regulations on pork trade flows between different regions within China. We apply a linear programming tool to estimate pork trade flows from 2000 to 2008, and discuss the environmental acts on livestock pollution and income level to proxy environmental regulations. We use OLS regression and panel data with dummy variable in the cross-sectional GLS estimation. Our results indicate that the gap of environmental regulations between trade partners has a positive relationship with pork trade flows, and the difference in environmental regulations changes the traditional comparative advantage pattern to some extent. This paper provides convincing evidence for the pollution haven effect on livestock in China.     

An empirical analysis on the impact of environmental regulations on pork trade:evidence from China

This paper uses the gravity model to examine the effect of environmental regulations on pork trade flows between different regions within China.We apply a linear programming tool to estimate pork trade flows from 2000 to 2008,and discuss the environmental acts on livestock pollution and income level to proxy environmental regulations.We use OLS regression and panel data with dummy variable in the cross-sectional GLS estimation.Our results indicate that the gap of environmental regulations between trade partners has a positive relationship with pork trade flows,and the difference in environmental regulations changes the traditional comparative advantage pattern to some extent.This paper provides convincing evidence for the pollution haven effect on livestock in China.     

Local-neighborhood effects of different environmental regulations on green innovation: evidence from prefecture level cities of China

Environment, Development and Sustainability - Green innovation is the key to solve increasingly serious environmental problems. Previous studies mainly focus on the effects of environmental...     

Green customer-based brand equity and green purchase consumption behaviour: the moderating role of religious commitment

The purpose of this study is to investigate the customer-based brand equity (CBBE) of green brands and their impact on green purchase consumption with the moderating effect of religious commitment. Data were gathered from 315 consumers in three large cities in Pakistan and further analysed by partial least square. The results of this study revealed that there is a significant positive nexus between CBBE and green purchase consumption. Additionally, results showed the evidence of religious commitment moderating the relationship between CBBE and green purchase consumption. The findings are helpful to the greening companies, suggesting that they should focus on every component of brand performance in order to achieve the higher ranked performance that ultimately initiates green purchase and repurchase consumption. This research addresses the attitude behaviour gap in green purchase consumption by incorporating the contingent impact of religious commitment.

     

GRADE: Assessing the quality of evidence in environmental and occupational health

There is high demand in environmental health for adoption of a structured process that evaluates and integrates evidence while making decisions and recommendations transparent. The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) framework holds promise to address this demand. For over a decade, GRADE has been applied successfully to areas of clinical medicine, public health, and health policy, but experience with GRADE in environmental and occupational health is just beginning. Environmental and occupational health questions focus on understanding whether an exposure is a potential health hazard or risk, assessing the exposure to understand the extent and magnitude of risk, and exploring interventions to mitigate exposure or risk. Although GRADE offers many advantages, including its flexibility and methodological rigor, there are features of the different sources of evidence used in environmental and occupational health that will require further consideration to assess the need for method refinement. An issue that requires particular attention is the evaluation and integration of evidence from human, animal, in vitro, and in silico (computer modeling) studies when determining whether an environmental factor represents a potential health hazard or risk. Assessment of the hazard of exposures can produce analyses for use in the GRADE evidence-to-decision (EtD) framework to inform risk-management decisions about removing harmful exposures or mitigating risks. The EtD framework allows for grading the strength of the recommendations based on judgments of the certainty in the evidence (also known as quality of the evidence), as well as other factors that inform recommendations such as social values and preferences, resource implications, and benefits. GRADE represents an untapped opportunity for environmental and occupational health to make evidence-based recommendations in a systematic and transparent manner. The objectives of this article are to provide an overview of GRADE, discuss GRADE's applicability to environmental health, and identify priority areas for method assessment and development.     

Effect of lifestyle changes and consumption patterns on environmental impact: a comparison study of Pakistan and China

Increased economic development and industrialization put strain on environment, hence causing pollution and destroying ecosystem. Generally, many different factors affect the environment. These factors include GHG emissions, deforestation, and others. These are all related to human activities on Earth. Other factors that affect environment include population, consumption patterns, and changing life styles of people due to increased income. This study involves the comparison analysis of Pakistan and China on the basis of environmental impact caused by some major driving factors. China is the second largest CO₂ emitter in the world with a population of 1.37 billion in 2016 and the second largest economy in the world. Pakistan is ranked as 40th on the basis of nominal GDP. Both the countries observed noticeable growth in economic development for over 55 years, i.e. 1960–2016. This study identifies how population, affluence, consumption, and emissions as the major factors affect environmental pollution and use ImPACT equation, or I = PACT, to calculate the environmental impact and to determine which factors affect the environment the most. The study suggests that the people of both China and Pakistan have experienced increased income for the past 50 years and this increase has led to the changes in their lifestyles, from suitable clothing and quality food to comfortable living and increased energy consumption, thus affecting environment.     

The impact of urban spatial structure on air pollution: empirical evidence from China

Environment, Development and Sustainability - For a long time, air pollution caused by unreasonable urban spatial structure and excessive urban sprawl has been a prominent environmental problem in...     

Revisiting the environmental Kuznets curve: evidence from Turkey

Environment, Development and Sustainability - This paper uncovers the link between economic development and environmental degradation in Turkey by employing two distinct methods. We test the...     

The risks of risk-based regulation: insights from the environmental policy domain

Risk-based regulation has become increasingly popular in recent years. Proponents argue that it facilitates robust governance, contributing to efficient and effective use of regulatory resources and delivering interventions in proportion to risk. Critics contend that the challenges of operationalising risk-based governance mitigate its potential benefits. In this paper we start by considering what we mean by risk-based governance and discuss some of the factors shaping the adoption of such strategies. We then consider the development and operation of risk-based approaches in the environmental policy domain, focusing specifically on the regulation of contaminated land and radioactive waste. We argue that whilst risk-based approaches can offer important benefits, they face a range of epistemic, institutional and normative challenges that can play an important role in shaping the way that organisations manage both risks to society and their own institutional risks. This has profound implications for achieving regulatory objectives and, for this paper, the environmental outcomes that the regulations are designed to deliver.     

Switching behaviors toward green brands: evidence from emerging economy

The aim of the current research was to recognize consumer attitude gap toward green brand by studying role of green consumer value and green brand equity toward the switching intention and purchase intention of consumers toward green brands. The current research employed quantitative research design and collected data through questionnaire from 331 respondents. The PLS-structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the structured relationships. The findings suggest green customer value is product of the three important factors namely green brand experiential risk, green brand experiential quality and green brand experience. Hence, these act as the main drivers of switching consumer behavioral intention toward the green products through consumer green brand equity. The research attempts to study the attitude–behavior gap in the green marketing literature by investigating the role which includes, green brand experiential risk, green brand experiential quality and green brand experience on customer value leading to green brand equity. The research provide an in-depth understating of attitude–behavior gaps and role of green customer value and brand equity that plays vital role in marketing campaigns and policy making to increase purchase intention of green eco-conscious products.

     

中国环境规制政策工具的比较与选择——基于贝叶斯模型平均(BMA)方法的实证研究

改革开放以来,中国政府逐步构建起了命令—控制型、市场激励型、公众参与型和自愿行动型"四维一体"的环境政策工具体系。针对不同政策类型工具的有效性,很多学者已经运用多种方法进行了大量研究,但大多数学者只关注其中某一种工具的治理效果,同时考虑所有政策工具效果的文献并不多见。本文首次运用贝叶斯模型平均(BMA)方法实证分析了不同类型环境政策工具在当前中国环境治理体系下的相对贡献程度,实证结果表明:命令—控制型工具和市场激励型工具仍然是当前中国治理环境污染最为有效的政策工具,公众参与型工具和自愿行动型工具的有效性相对较差。基于此,本文的政策建议是:首先,中国政府不仅需要构建完善的环保法律法规体系,更需要加大环保执法投入,提升环保执法的主动性;其次,中国政府应该进一步完善市场激励型工具,建立更加弹性化的排污收费标准和更为严格的排污惩罚制度,推动排污权交易制度更广泛地实施;再次,积极推动社会公众参与环境保护,降低社会公众的参与成本,使得社会公众能更加便捷地参与环境治理;最后,积极鼓励非政府组织、企业发起自愿性环保项目,对于推动环保标准的提升和环保法律法规的逐步完善,加强居民、企业的环境保护意识具有重要意义。因此,全社会环境问题的治理是一个系统性工程,必须采取相应的措施,充分运用命令—控制、市场激励、公众参与、自愿行动等正式和非正式的环境治理措施,形成一个有机、有序的环境治理体系,才能提升所有环境规制政策工具的有效性,促进经济社会可持续发展。     

Effects of investment on energy intensity: evidence from China

This article explores the effects of investment upon energy intensity by applying a unique panel data of China’s 27 provinces between 2004 and 2013. In addition, it also particularly studies other factors, such as energy price, economic structure, and urbanization. The results, based on four econometric regression model results, suggest that in general, the indigenous investment on research and development is a more powerful tool to decrease China’s energy intensity regardless of region disparity. The foreign direct investment (FDI) has a prominent but not persistent effect on energy intensity. However, the outward direct investment has not shown its significant impact on energy intensity. At the level of an aggregate economy and China’s eastern region, the results demonstrate that FDI improves energy efficiency significantly. For the central and western provinces, FDI does not support the similar conclusion. Based on these analyses, we present the corresponding regional policies for policymakers.     

Heterogeneous impact of agricultural support policies: evidence from Turkey

Agricultural support policies, which increase production to excessive levels, have been heavily criticized for their distortional effects on farmers’ decisions. High input consumption, which harms the environment, and the distribution of supports, which causes income inequality among farmers, are also the other factors that economists criticize these support policies. However, in recent years, the use and dependence on production and land have been increasing globally due to fears of food insecurity in several countries. In this article, the impact of a support policy on cotton farmers’ land in Turkey is evaluated using a detailed farm-level micro dataset. We use the dynamic panel model to consider the production dynamics, unobservable individual heterogeneity, and the endogeneity of the support variable. Our results show that considering the support variable as endogenous significantly increased its impact on farmers’ land. A farmer’s past land allocation decisions also affected their current lands holdings. However, the results varied considerably between regions and between different land sizes. Therefore, the findings show the importance of heterogeneity in the impact of support policies. We conclude that due to the heterogeneous impact of support policies, it might not be possible to discuss the effect of support policies using an average estimate applicable for all farmers. Therefore, a different support policy considering regional characteristics or farm size is necessary to obtain the desired policy outcomes.

     

国家高新区提升城市绿色创新效率的作用机制与效果识别--基于双重差分法的检验

绿色创新作为将环境保护与经济增长有机整合的发展战略,是当前解决城市发展困境的一剂良方,实践中,促进城市绿色创新水平提升成为政界和学界共同关注的话题。国家高新区是推动城市绿色创新水平提升,实现经济可持续发展的重要载体,然而关于国家高新区设立是否对城市绿色创新发展起作用仍需要进一步实证检验。利用中国285个地级市2003—2016年的面板数据,通过构建双向固定效应模型实现双重差分的目的,识别国家高新区建立影响区域绿色发展的作用机制,并评估高新区驱动城市绿色创新效率提升的净效应。研究结果表明:①国家高新区显著提高了城市绿色创新效率,这一结果在经过了反事实检验和多项稳健性检验后依然成立。②从理论上构建了高新区驱动绿色创新效率提升的影响机制,并通过实证检验甄别出了高新区促进城市绿色创新效率提升的创新驱动机制和结构驱动机制,而未通过集聚驱动机制,"形聚而神不聚"的现象仍广泛存在。③高新区驱动绿色创新效率的提升呈现明显的区域异质性,高新区对东部区域的绿色创新效率驱动效果明显,而对中西部区域效果不明显。④高新区驱动绿色创新效率提升还存在着城市等级的差异,一定程度上表现为"边际递减规律",相比于省会城市,副省会城市、较大的市和一般的市从高新区设立当中获得的政策效益更大。为了进一步提升高新区对城市绿色创新水平的驱动作用,文章据此从发挥集聚推动效应、增强自主创新能力、推动产业转型升级、因地制宜发展高新区等方面提出相关政策建议。     

中国碳排放权交易促进低碳技术创新机制的研究

碳排放权交易已成为我国实施以市场为基础的重要环境规制之一,但此交易市场建设能否诱发我国低碳技术创新的有关研究仍然不足。以我国七个碳排放权交易试点为研究对象,采用合成控制法进行准自然实验,选取2004—2016年全国282个城市的面板数据,评估碳排放权交易试点政策对低碳技术创新的诱发效果,并使用排列检验法进行有效性检验;进而,定量分析碳排放权交易试点正式运行后对低碳技术创新的影响因素,探索七个试点效果差异的成因。研究发现:①碳排放权交易试点政策整体上诱发了试点地区的低碳技术创新活动。②各试点的政策效果存在一定差异,除重庆外的六个试点对政策响应较为迅速,其中北京、上海的诱发效果最显著,天津、广东、深圳和湖北次之,而重庆试点未能对政策作出充分的响应。③碳排放权交易对低碳技术创新作用中的政策"信号-预期"机制在我国首次得到验证,该机制在除重庆外的试点地区都得到了较好的构建。④碳排放权交易市场建设与区域产业结构升级产生了良好的协同作用,促进低碳技术创新,但其未能与外商直接投资形成相同作用;除重庆外,碳排放权交易这一市场型环境规制与控制型环境规制也呈现出协同作用。据此,应积极推进全国性碳排放权交易市场建设,以发挥其对低碳技术创新的诱发作用;但在统一市场建设过程中应重视地区差异,分步骤稳步推进;还应注重加强政府政策信号管理,引导企业开展低碳技术创新活动。     

International experience of green development in Western China: an overall review of policy and practice

Green development emphasizes co-development between economic and environmental dimensions, and is a people-centered sustainable development approach. Western China demands green development, and international experience could provide necessary, unique and important help and support for Western China to achieve its green development goals. This paper has made a comprehensive overall review and analysis of international experience in green development policy and its implementation, in particular, OECD countries’ (mostly Australia and Canada) experience have been analyzed following the major policy foci defined by the Task Force on Strategy and Policies on Environment and Development in Western China initiated by China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED). Data and information were gathered from the field surveys and investigations, expert meetings, as well as literature review. The main sessions include policy framework and road map establishment, implementation and performance assessment, co-development between economic development and environmental protection, as well as green employment and poverty alleviation. The paper has addressed five policy considerations for the future promotion of green development in Western China.     

Convergence of new members of the EU: changes in household consumption expenditure structure regarding environmental impact during the prosperous period

The materially intensive consumption patterns and lifestyles present a major challenge to sustainability. The major part of consumption is determined in households; therefore, most of the environmental load is allocated to households as well. In order to examine how environmental impact by household consumption varies during the prosperous period, one needs to explore the alteration of household consumption structure, considering that discrete consumption expenditure categories influence environmental impact distinctly. Regarding that, alterations of household consumption expenditure structures are also partially influenced by European integration process. So convergence of new member states of the EU to the old ones by household consumption structure was analyzed. For estimation of occurrence and the extent of household consumption structure, X-convergence was applied. Therefore, the results showed that during the period of 1995–2007, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia were the most successful and Latvia with Poland achieved the least in converging toward the EU-15 consumption expenditure structure. According to evaluation of distinct consumption categories in relation to acidifying compounds and greenhouse gas emissions intensities, it was revealed that alterations of household consumption expenditure structure led to smaller levels of household environmental impact with the exception of Hungary.     

FDI,technological progress,and green total factor energy productivity: evidence from 281 prefecture cities in China

Environment, Development and Sustainability - This paper uses the slack-based measure-Malmquist–Luenberger (SBM-ML) method to calculate green total factor energy productivity (GTFEP),...     

Spatial distribution of the environmental resource consumption in the Heihe River Basin of Northwestern China

Sustainable development needs to consider the inequality between economic development and resource consumption and keep it within a rational range. Therefore, quantitatively measuring this inequality is an important and hot issue. Using the ecological footprint as the index of environmental resource consumption, the spatial inequality of this parameter and the reasons for the inequality were analyzed using the Gini coefficient and the Theil index in the Heihe River Basin of northwestern China. The spatial inequality of resource consumption was clearly high. Decomposing the Theil index into urban and rural areas showed that spatial inequality was mainly derived from the inter-regional inequality between urban and rural areas (this accounted for 63.89% of the total inequality). When the Theil index was decomposed into different sections along the Heihe River Basin (e.g., the upper, middle, and lower reaches), the spatial inequality was mainly derived from the internal inequality within the middle reach (this accounted for 80.95%). Finally, the regression analysis of the Gini coefficients of the ecological footprint, resident income and population revealed that the ecological footprint inequality increased with rising income and population inequality, although the latter had a lower effect than the former.