| The quest for high-speed development and industrial growth increases the demand for energy consumption and other resources such as coal,resulting in a slew of environmental pollution issues and threatening the balance of the natural ecosystem and human health.Arguably fossil energy use is anticipated to be a restraining factor for green growth.In promoting environmental excellence,China has steadily boosted its investment in environmental pollution management in recent years.Simultaneously,the Chinese government has strategically promoted the optimal allocation of intergovernmental functions at different levels through environmental decentralization,sound institutional quality,and the promotion of eco-innovation to ensure efficient environmental regulation for low-carbon production,environmental excellence,and sustainable green development.Despite these efforts,serious environmental challenges persist,hindering the mitigation of climate change.According to Yale University and Columbia University’s Environmental Performance Index Report in 2018,China’s total environmental quality comprehensiveness score is 50.74,ranking 120 th overall and 177 th in air quality.This suggests an urgent need to find an innovative balance between environmental performance and economic development at this critical moment of global warming.However,without restraints and ecological regulations,industrial firms would lack eco-innovation incentives since they prioritize profit maximization and not environmental quality promotion.Therefore,this study seeks to extend environmental quality mechanisms such as environmental regulation,eco-innovation,and research and development(R&D)to analyze the impact of environmental decentralization and institutional quality on green development.Several studies on green development mostly focus on the linkage between environmental regulations,technological advancement,and green industrial sustainable development.Moreover,the concentration of previous studies has been on fiscal decentralization which simply describes the environmental decentralization behavior of local governments and ignores the possible inconsistencies between them.Notably,this may lead to a deviation in the estimation of China’s environmental decentralization management system to a certain extent.Similarly,previous studies on the subject matter mainly outline the division of economic rights between central and local governments without emphasizing on the local governments’ institutional quality.However,from the perspective of environmental excellence,previous researchers focus more on green total factor productivity rather than a sustainable path of green development.Additionally,from the perspective of research methods,most studies have been static and short-term,and the endogenous problems caused by the dual causality among environmental decentralization,institutional quality,and green development cannot be effectively solved,which may lead to errors in the estimation results.This present study seeks to achieve the following five specific objectives: Firstly,to examine the impact of environmental decentralization and eco-innovation on sustainable green development and the influential role of environmental regulation in the context of green paradox;secondly,to investigate the presence of structural breaks through environmental regulation in the nexus of environmental decentralization,institutional quality,R&D,eco-innovation,and regional green development of China;thirdly,to investigate the spatial dependence among environmental decentralization,environmental regulation and eco-innovation in achieving regional green development in China;fourthly,to analyze the role institutional quality and R&D intensity play in the quest for regional green development of China;fifthly,we seek to examine the sustainable development capabilities of China’s coal cities.To achieve the above stated objectives,the researcher evaluated environmental decentralization from three perspectives(environmental administrative decentralization,environmental supervision decentralization,and environmental monitoring decentralization),which provides a comprehensive analysis of China’s unique environmental decentralization management system to make up for the deficiencies of environmental decentralization research.Again,through this approach,change in the environmental management system is reflected by the change in personnel size of environmental agencies at different levels of government,making the study finding more scientific and applicable.Moreover,the integration of environmental decentralization and institutional quality in a unified analysis framework builds a formidable understanding of the mechanism through which environmental decentralization and institutional quality impact green development.Additionally,the modified methodologies used in this study simultaneously adjust the estimation techniques by using lag values to control the endogenous relationships among the study variables for a robust analysis.The researcher further constructs a dynamic chain of an all-inclusive estimation of green development and analyzes the spatial correlation as well as regional heterogeneity to balance economic growth and environmental protection.The main dependent variable of this study is green development;however,in testing for a mediational role,eco-innovation is partly used as a dependent variable.The independent variables for the study are environmental decentralization,institutional quality,eco-innovation,R&D intensity,and environmental regulation.In addition,the study included economic growth,urbanization,and enterprise-scale as control variables.Before proceeding with the study analysis,a diagnostic stability test is performed to overcome the problem of serial correlation.The study applied the ordinary least squares(OLS)approach to test the relationship among variables.However,the traditional ordinary least squares(OLS)test could not identify all critical relationships among the variables,so the study applied a quantile regression to further explore the nexus.In order to achieve the study objectives,different models with appropriate estimators were used for the empirical analyses,following the diagnostic test results.This includes the Baron and Kenny test of mediation,the Sobel test,Chow test,the Feasible Generalized Least Square(FGLS),the Generalized Method of Moment(GMM),the Spatial Durbin Model(SDM),the Dynamic Threshold Panel Model(DTPM),and the DEA-Based Malmquist method of efficiency.The researcher considered estimators that are robust to endogeneity in the selection of the estimates for the models so that the root of endogeneity,which is centered on mutual cause and effect,missing explanatory variables,and measurement error,may be avoided.Therefore,the study findings are robust,and the conclusions are valid for policy recommendation and formulation.To enable better and in-depth analyses and discussions in providing sufficient mechanisms pertaining to environmental quality through green development for objectives one to four,this study used panel data from 2000 to 2020 across the 30 provinces of China.Due to China’s longstanding history and data availability,Tibet and three administrative units:Hong Kong,Taiwan,and Macau,were excluded from the analysis.For regional heterogeneity analysis,we grouped the 30 provinces into three categories;eastern,central,and western regions.However,we focused on 45 coal cities to achieve objective five.All the data for the study were retrieved from the Environmental Statistical Yearbook of China,the Science and Technology Statistical Yearbook of China,and the China National Bureau of Statistics between 2000 to 2020.The study results revealed that environmental decentralization positively and significantly impacts eco-innovation.An efficient environmental decentralization tends to promote ecoinnovation by a rate of 0.47.Similarly,environmental decentralization and eco-innovation significantly promote China’s green development,implying that a percentage increase in ecoinnovation coupled with an improvement in environmental decentralization could positively enhance the green development level of China by a rate of 0.651 and 0.719,respectively.Notably,eco-innovation is solution-driven and introduces a new paradigm of urgency to industries.This changes the resource utilization,processes,procedures,and practices,reducing the adverse effect on the environment and promoting green development.Whereas effective environmental decentralization induces "stiff upward competition" structures,defines the clear responsibilities for environmental pollution treatment,minimizes the negative ecological effluence externalities,and recuperates environmental standards.The results also revealed a partial mediational role of eco-innovation in the nexus between environmental decentralization and green development in China.From the perspective of the green paradox,environmental regulation played a significant positive moderating impacting role on the relationship between environmental decentralization and eco-innovation but not on the relationship between eco-innovation and green development.Therefore,this study concludes that environmental regulation significantly influences the relationship between environmental decentralization and green development positively,implying that the “green paradox” hypothesis does not exist in China’s environmental management system in the quest for green development.This affirms that environmental regulation reduces environmental negative externalities through environmental decentralization and promotes the optimization of environmental efficiency and green development.In addition to the above outcomes,the study revealed that environmental decentralization and environmental administrative decentralization play a significant role in promoting green development.Environmental supervision decentralization and environmental monitoring decentralization have a certain negative impact on regional green development.From the empirical results of different regions in China,in the economically developed eastern region,environmental decentralization,environmental supervision decentralization,and environmental monitoring decentralization inhibit regional green development,whereas environmental administrative decentralization plays a promotive role.In the underdeveloped central and western regions,environmental decentralization,environmental administrative decentralization,and environmental supervision decentralization promote regional green development.However,China’s environmental regulation can further be tightened from the perspective of the nexus between eco-ixinnovation and green development,to minimize the pollution haven effect syndrome for green development.The findings further indicated that China’s green development has a spatial correlation.This suggests that China’s regional green development is generally affected by local and surrounding environmental factors with an inverted U-shaped movement in the spatial dependence of green development.Similarly,it is realized that institutional quality and R&D intensity have spatial effects and they significantly promote green development in China.Implying that China’s institutional quality and R&D intensity has significantly contributed to the increase in ecoinnovation,reflecting the edge of the country in promoting environmental quality.Sound institutional quality has ensured a fair and standard payment of environmental service costs and seals all possible corrupt channels of illegal payment.This reduces enterprises’ total costs and helps them accumulate funds to invest in eco-friendly technologies.However,the effect of institutional quality on regional green development varies depending on the various categories of environmental decentralization.The effect of environmental decentralization does not operate as a mutational model throughout the consequential benefit of institutional quality on green development but rather as a structural-gradual model.This demonstrates that the impact of institutional quality on green development in China exhibits a nonlinear feature due to environmental decentralization.Therefore,improvement in institutional quality through enhanced marketization and intellectual property protection exerts a remarkable impact on reducing environmental pollution to promote green development.Thus,marketization and intellectual property protection can increase the positive influence of green production in reducing the environmental pollution.Through institutional quality,green investment in pollution reduction and the effect become increasingly apparent.This is because institutional quality can help execute ideal policies to ensure sustained economic growth,environmental excellence,and green development.Regarding the dynamic analysis of the sustainable development capabilities of coal cities,the growing coal cities had the average highest sustainable development capabilities.Selectively,the maturity and recession coal cities had lower sustainable development capabilities.However,their capabilities are still above average,implying that even though the general resource input is relatively ineffective and have not yet attained the production frontier,they are still within an appreciable sustainable development capability path.Generally,the sustainable development capabilities of China’s coal cities are significantly promoted by technological changes.It is observed that “techch” facilitated the improvement of the production efficiency of China’s coal cities.This significant improvement can be linked to the high level of effective environmental decentralization and the sound institutional quality of China,which promotes pure technical efficiency through R&D-induced eco-innovations.Evidently,even though technological efficiency has not significantly influenced the capabilities of coal mining cities,its efficiency trend is stable and promising.Therefore,the growth coal cities’ sustainable development capabilities can serve as a standard for all the different categories of coal cities to enhance their capabilities.Nevertheless,these coal mining cities still have potentials to improve their degree of sustainable development while ensuring economic and environmental quality transformation. |
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