| China’s economy is in the hard stage of transforming the development mode,optimizing the economic structure and transforming the growth momentum.The low-carbon transition is intrinsic to the Chinese economy’s pursuit of high efficiency,high-quality development and the fight against global warming.And environmental regulation tools are important method for governments to govern the environment.Especially in the context of China’s major strategic deployment of the "double carbon target",it is particularly important to discuss carbon reduction from the perspective of environmental regulation.However,the carbon reduction effects of environmental regulation tools are closely related to the type and spatial characteristics of the regulation tools.Therefore,this paper simultaneously introduces three different types of environmental regulation tools into the study of carbon emission reduction,and uses spatial statistical methods to empirically test the direct effects,spatial spillover effects and regional heterogeneity of different types of environmental regulation tools on carbon emission reduction based on provincial sample data.From the perspective of synergistic optimization,this paper measures the horizontal synergy and vertical synergy of different types of environmental regulation tools,empirically tests the synergistic governance efficiency of environmental regulatory tools on carbon emission reduction,and proposes direct synergistic optimization measures of environmental regulation tools from two dimensions:horizontal cross-regional and vertical intra-regional.Based on the indirect impact of environmental regulation tools on carbon emission reduction,this paper constructs a spatial intermediary effect model to quantify the intermediary effect of different types of environmental regulation tools on carbon emission reduction after considering industrial structure,technological innovation and foreign direct investment.Based on different channels of intermediary effect of different environmental regulation tools on carbon emission reduction,this paper fully explores and considers industrial policies,the direction of collaborative optimization of environmental regulation tools after technological innovation policy and foreign investment policy.Based on this,a relatively complete collaborative optimization system of environmental regulation tools is formed,in order to help China achieve the "double carbon goal" and promote the transformation.The main work of this paper is as follows:(1)The entropy-based approach measures the level of different types of environmental regulation tools and further examines the spatial relevance of environmental regulation tools.Further subdivision of environmental regulation types into command-and-control,market-incentive,and public-participation types while incorporating them into an overall analytical framework.The entropy-based approach measures the level of different types of environmental regulation tools,focusing on their spatial relevance using ESDA.It is found that the level of three different types of environmental regulation tools differ significantly,the level of market-incentive environmental regulation tool is gradually surpassing the level of command-and-control environmental regulation tool.which will play an increasingly important incentive role,and the level of public-participation environmental regulation tool is the lowest,but in a rising trend year by year,which means that the public awareness and enthusiasm to participate in environmental governance is increasing.All three types of environmental regulations show significant spatial characteristics of high-high and low-low agglomeration,with high-high agglomeration mainly concentrated in the east and low-low agglomeration mainly concentrated in the central and western regions.(2)Based on the framework of "multiple inputs+multiple outputs",with capital,labor and energy as input factors,GDP as desired output and CO2 as non-desired output,a non-radial and non-angle super-efficiency SBM model is applied to measure the carbon emission efficiency from a total factor perspective,focusing on the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of carbon emission efficiency.The results found that the provincial carbon emission efficiency experienced a process of declining and then improving during the sample period,but the overall level of carbon emission efficiency was low,and the differences between regions gradually expanded,with more room for improvement.ESDA analysis shows that most of the provinces with high carbon emission efficiency are distributed in the eastern region,and those with low carbon emission efficiency are mainly distributed in the central and western regions,which is consistent with the spatial clustering characteristics of environmental regulation tools and provides a prerequisite for studying carbon emission reduction from the perspective of environmental regulation.(3)Three spatial weight matrices of spatial adjacency,geographic distance and economic distance are introduced to empirically examine the variability of carbon reduction effects of different types of environmental regulation tools and regional heterogeneity based on a spatial spillover perspective.Since local governments may cause environmental regulation tools to have spatial spillover effects,the interaction effects of fiscal decentralization and environmental regulation on carbon emission efficiency are examined comparatively in the model.The study shows that the direct and spatial spillover effects of different types of environmental regulation tools on carbon emission efficiency are significantly different;carbon emission efficiency has a significant positive spatial spillover effect,reflecting the characteristic of "all for the good and all for the bad".Fiscal decentralization has significantly improved the efficiency of local carbon emissions and has not created a "race to the bottom"of environmental regulations in promoting carbon emissions reduction,indicating that the promotion of low-carbon transition has become one of the common goals of all local governments.The industrial structure and energy consumption structure significantly inhibit the improvement of carbon emission efficiency in local and neighboring regions,indicating that adjusting the industrial structure and optimizing the energy consumption structure will be an important direction for future energy conservation and emission reduction;meanwhile,technological progress significantly improves carbon emission efficiency but generates a significant negative spatial spillover.Therefore,in the future,structural adjustment and technological progress will be the "twin engines"driving China’s economic energy saving and emission reduction,low-carbon transformation and ecological civilization construction,and more"structural dividends" and "technological dividends" should be released through structural adjustment and technological progress.(4)The efficiency of environmental regulation tools for carbon emission reduction is examined from a synergistic perspective and synergistic optimization measures are proposed.First,from the perspective of synergy of different types of environmental regulation tools,this paper constructs cross-regional horizontal synergy and intra-regional vertical synergy indicators of environmental regulation,measures the horizontal synergy and vertical synergy of environmental regulation tools,and empirically tests the synergistic governance efficiency of environmental regulation tools on carbon emission reduction based on the establishment of regional panel and provincial panel data.The results show that collaborative governance of environmental regulation tools can significantly improve the efficiency of carbon emissions,both horizontally across regions and vertically within regions.Based on this,direct synergistic optimization measures of environmental regulation tools are proposed from the perspective of cross-regional horizontal synergy and synergy of rights and responsibilities of each subject in the region.Secondly,environmental regulation tools can not only directly affect carbon emission reduction,but also indirectly affect carbon emission reduction through other channels.Therefore,in order to comprehensively explore the collaborative optimization of environmental regulation tools,this paper constructs a spatial intermediary effect model to fully test the intermediary effect of environmental regulation tools on carbon emission efficiency through three policies:industrial policy,technological innovation and foreign investment.Based on the different paths of indirect effects of different environmental regulation tools policies,this paper puts forward the collaborative optimization direction of emission reduction of environmental regulation tools after the introduction of three policies. |
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