The Impact Of Heterogeneous Environmental Regulation On Urban Green Total Factor Productivity In China

The improvement of green total productivity(GTFP)is the key link for China to move towards the stage of high-quality economic development.The improvement of urban GTFP will help cities achieve the green development goal of optimizing the ecological environment while increasing their economic growth.As an important tool to solve the negative externalities of the environment,the formulation and implementation of environmental regulation will have an important impact on urban GTFP in the context of the current policy requirements to achieve green development.Different types of environmental regulation tools have different characteristics,transmission mechanisms and implementation effects.Therefore,this paper attempts to explore the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulation on GTFP after dividing environmental regulation into three types: command control type,market incentive type and voluntary type.This paper reviews and analyzes the existing research conclusions of environmental regulation on GTFP.First,288 cities at prefecture level and above in China from 2005 to 2019 are selected as research samples.Using the Super SBMGML model,the urban GTFP level and regional differences in China from 2006 to2019 are calculated and analyzed.Secondly,we use fixed effect linear panel regression model and nonlinear panel regression model to study the impact of command control and market incentive environmental regulation on GTFP.Thirdly,we use spatial econometric model to study the spatial spillover effect of command control and market incentive environmental regulation on GTFP.Finally,the influence of voluntary environmental regulation on GTFP is studied by using double difference model.The research shows that: first,China’s overall GTFP shows an upward trend.The annual average value of GTFP in Chinese cities shows a trend of fluctuating growth.Green technology efficiency has a greater contribution to the improvement of GTFP in Chinese cities,while green technology progress has a smaller contribution to the improvement of GTFP in Chinese cities.The high value of GTFP is mainly distributed in the eastern coastal cities,provincial capitals,municipalities directly under the central government and special economic zones.Secondly,the urban GTFP levels in the east,middle,west and northeast regions show obvious regional differences.The cities in the eastern region have the highest GTFP,followed by the central region,followed by the western region,and finally the northeast region.The source of GTFP growth in the eastern region is mainly green technology progress.The early growth source of the central region is the improvement of green efficiency,and the later growth source is the progress of green technology.The growth source of the western and northeast regions is the improvement of green efficiency.Third,the relationship between heterogeneous environmental regulation and GTFP is different,and there are regional differences.Command control environmental regulation has an inverse "U" shaped nonlinear effect on GTFP.Market incentive environmental regulation has a "U" shaped nonlinear effect on GTFP.The command and control environmental regulation in the eastern region has an inverted "U" nonlinear impact on GTFP,while the market incentive environmental regulation has a positive impact on GTFP.The command control environmental regulation in the central region has a positive effect on GTFP,and the market incentive environmental regulation has a "U" shaped nonlinear effect on GTFP.Both the command and control environmental regulations in the western region and the northeast region have a "U" shaped nonlinear impact on GTFP,and the market incentive environmental regulations have a negative impact on GTFP.Fourthly,the spatial spillover effects of heterogeneous environmental regulation on GTFP are different and have regional differences.For different types of environmental regulations,command-control environmental regulations will have a negative spatial spillover effect on the GTFP of neighboring cities,while market incentive environmental regulations will have a positive spatial spillover effect on the GTFP of neighboring cities.The sub regional study found that both the command control type environmental regulation and the market incentive type environmental regulation in the eastern and central regions had a positive spatial spillover effect on the impact of GTFP.The command control environmental regulation in the western region will produce negative but not significant spatial spillover effect,while the market incentive environmental regulation will produce positive but not significant spatial spillover effect.The command control environmental regulation in Northeast China has a negative but not significant spatial spillover effect on GTFP,while the market incentive environmental regulation has a negative spatial spillover effect.Fifth,voluntary environmental regulation can promote the improvement of GTFP,and there are regional differences in the impact on GTFP.Environmental information disclosure is conducive to the improvement of GTFP,but it will only have a significant positive impact on GTFP in the third year of policy implementation,with time lag.The environmental information disclosure in the eastern and central regions has a significant positive impact on GTFP,while the environmental information disclosure in the western and northeast regions has no significant impact on GTFP.Compared with the existing literature,the main contributions of this paper are as follows: First,based on the existing research,the index system of GTFP measurement and evaluation is further optimized.Based on the existing research,this paper adds resource and environment input indicators,as well as unexpected output indicators such as environmental pollution emissions.Secondly,the research object is expanded.This paper takes prefecture level cities and municipalities directly under the Central Government as the smallest unit of the research object,from the national and provincial level of most previous studies to the urban level.Thirdly,the impact of different types of environmental regulation tools is considered.After dividing environmental regulation into three types: command and control type,market incentive type and voluntary type,this paper studies the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulation on GTFP and obtains policy recommendations for different types of environmental regulation.Finally,the spatial interaction effect of environmental regulation and GTFP is explored.From the perspective of spatial interaction,this paper uses panel data of cities at prefecture level and above to solve the problems of too large geographical unit scale and insufficient sample number in existing literature and explores the spatial spillover effect of environmental regulation on GTFP.