Research On Environmental Regulation Competition,Industrial Structure Adjustment And Economic Green Transformation

The dual red line of natural resources and ecological environment forces the Chinese economy to urgently break away from the traditional factor driven development model and achieve a shift towards green development.The green transformation of the economy has become a consensus in international and domestic development,and is the only way to achieve sustainable development.As an important link between economic activities and the ecological environment,industrial structure not only plays a role in resource allocation,but also serves as a "control body" for resource consumption and pollutant emissions.Environmental regulation is one of the important means for regions to improve environmental quality and promote green economic transformation.On the one hand,environmental regulations may increase additional emission reduction and pollution control costs,leading to a cost following effect,which is not conducive to industrial structure adjustment and thus detrimental to economic green transformation;On the other hand,Porter believes that strict and appropriately designed environmental regulations can promote technological innovation among enterprises,continuously upgrade industrial structures,and thus facilitate green economic transformation.The competition behavior of environmental regulations between regions will also affect the above process.The special "promotion tournament" mechanism in China has led to multiple interactive strategies among local governments in environmental regulation,such as “Race to the bottom” competition,differentiated competition,and “Race to the top” competition.The different competitive strategies of environmental regulation have uncertain impacts on the green transformation of the economy through the adjustment of industrial structure.This article first defines core concepts such as environmental regulation competition,industrial structure adjustment,and economic green transformation.It reviews classic principles of resource and environmental economics,institutional economics,and industrial structure economics,summarizes relevant research results at home and abroad,and constructs a theoretical framework for the impact of environmental regulation competition on economic green transformation through industrial structure adjustment.Secondly,by analyzing the evolution of environmental regulation competition policies,spatio-temporal evolution trends,and econometric models,the forms of environmental regulation competition in China at different time periods were scientifically divided.The spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of industrial structure adjustment and economic green transformation under different competition situations were analyzed,providing theoretical support and practical basis for subsequent research.Once again,this article takes 283 prefecture level and above cities in China from 2003to 2021 as research samples to empirically explore the impact of environmental regulatory competition on economic green transformation.Through the mediation effect model,it deeply explores the mediating mechanism of industrial structure adjustment that environmental regulatory competition affects economic green transformation.Then,a comprehensive system dynamics model was constructed to simulate the complex system and causal relationships between environmental regulation competition,industrial structure adjustment,and economic green transformation.By setting different scenarios,the system parameters of environmental regulation and its related elements were changed,and the dynamic changes of industrial structure adjustment and economic green transformation system elements in different scenarios were simulated,predicted,and compared.Finally,corresponding policy recommendations are proposed from the aspects of environmental regulation competition,industrial structure adjustment,energy structure optimization,innovation capability enhancement,spatial layout optimization,and opening up to the outside world.The main research conclusions of this article are as follows.Firstly,Based on the analysis of environmental regulatory competition policies,the spatiotemporal characteristics of environmental regulatory competition,and the measurement results of environmental regulatory competition,China’s environmental regulatory competition can be divided into three stages: bottom competition from 2003 to 2006,differentiated competition from 2007 to 2012,and top competition from 2013 to 2021.These stages have undergone a continuous optimization strategy from bottom competition to differentiated competition and then to top competition.With the continuous optimization of environmental regulation competition forms,the level of industrial structure rationalization has been continuously improved from 2003 to 2021,and the spatial clustering characteristics have become increasingly obvious;The level of advanced industrial structure shows a U-shaped trend of first decreasing and then increasing,with the spatial scope of high-level areas continuously expanding and the spatial scope of low-level cities continuously shrinking.With the continuous optimization of environmental regulation competition,the overall efficiency of China’s green economy has been continuously increasing from 2003 to 2021,showing an"N"-shaped growth trend of first increasing,then decreasing,and then increasing again.The scope of high-level areas has been continuously expanding,and low-level cities have been significantly reduced.Secondly,from 2003 to 2021,environmental regulatory competition in China had a significant positive impact on the green transformation of the economy.Bottom to bottom competition in environmental regulations is not conducive to economic green transformation,the impact of differentiated competition on economic green transformation is uncertain,and top to top competition is conducive to economic green transformation.This indicates that top to top competition is the optimal mode of environmental regulation competition to promote economic green transformation.With the continuous evolution of environmental regulation competition forms,the impact of environmental regulation competition on economic green transformation has shifted from unfavorable to favorable.The overall impact of environmental regulation competition on regional economic green transformation shows a spatial distribution pattern of eastern region>western region>central region>northeast region.With the optimization of environmental regulatory competition,the impact of environmental regulatory competition on economic green transformation in the eastern,central,and western regions has shifted from unfavorable to favorable;The impact of environmental regulatory competition in the Northeast region on economic green transformation has shifted from insignificant to unfavorable.Thirdly,from the perspective of rationalization of industrial structure,the competition of urban environmental regulations in China from 2003 to 2021 effectively promoted the green transformation of the economy through the rationalization of industrial structure,and with the continuous optimization of environmental regulatory competition forms,the promoting effect continues to increase.The competition in environmental regulations in the eastern and western regions is conducive to economic green transformation through the rationalization of industrial structure,while the competition in environmental regulations in the central and northeastern regions has not had a significant impact on economic green transformation through the rationalization of industrial structure.From the perspective of industrial structure upgrading,the environmental regulation competition between Chinese cities from 2003 to 2021 effectively promoted the green transformation of the economy through industrial structure upgrading,and with the continuous evolution of environmental regulation competition forms,the promoting effect is also constantly strengthening.The competition in environmental regulations in the eastern,central,and western regions has a promoting effect on regional economic green transformation through the upgrading of industrial structure,while the competition in environmental regulations in the northeastern region has suppressed economic green transformation through the upgrading of industrial structure.Fourthly,Environmental regulation competition has significantly promoted the rationalization of industrial structure through resource endowment,technological innovation,industrial agglomeration,foreign direct investment,and international trade.With the continuous optimization of environmental regulatory competition,the promoting effect of environmental regulatory competition on industrial structure rationalization through resource endowment,technological innovation,industrial agglomeration,foreign direct investment,and international trade is becoming increasingly evident.Environmental regulation competition has significantly promoted the upgrading of industrial structure through resource endowment,human capital,technological innovation,and foreign direct investment;The significant suppression of industrial agglomeration has resulted in a higher level of industrial structure.With the continuous optimization of environmental regulation competition forms,the promotion effect of environmental regulation competition on industrial structure upgrading through resource endowment,human capital,technological innovation,and foreign direct investment is becoming more and more obvious.The inhibitory effect of industrial agglomeration on industrial structure upgrading is continuously weakening.Fifthly,by constructing a system dynamics model,the complex causal relationship of the "environmental regulation competition industrial structure adjustment economic green transformation"system was clarified.The test results showed that the system dynamics model has good fitting goodness and can effectively simulate the impact of industrial structure adjustment on economic green transformation under environmental regulation competition.By setting three different scenarios of benchmark emission reduction,moderate emission reduction,and enhanced emission reduction,the dynamic changes of various elements in the system under different scenarios were predicted and compared.The results showed that compared to the benchmark emission reduction scenario and enhanced emission reduction scenario,the moderate emission reduction scenario can not only ensure the simultaneous achievement of economic growth goals and resource and environmental goals,but also achieve relatively faster energy consumption turning point time and relatively larger pollutant reduction emissions with less GDP loss.Therefore,the moderate emission reduction scenario is the optimal choice for China’s future environmental regulation competition to promote economic green transformation through industrial structure adjustment.The innovation points of this thesis mainly include:(1)Taking the evolution of the strategy of "bottom-up competition → differentiated competition → top-down competition" as the logical mainline,this thesis dynamically studies the impact of environmental regulatory competition on economic green transformation through industrial structure adjustment,and compares and explores the theoretical mechanism,empirical testing,and scenario prediction of different environmental regulatory competition strategies on economic green transformation through industrial structure adjustment,Furthermore,it supplements the relevant research in the fields of environmental regulation and economic green transformation.(2)Integrate simulation into the research framework of environmental regulation competition,industrial structure adjustment,and economic green transformation.Based on the theoretical mechanism analysis and econometric regression test of the economic green transformation through industrial structure adjustment through environmental regulation competition,further simulation and scenario prediction were conducted on the complex causal relationships between various elements of the "environmental regulation competition industrial structure adjustment economic green transformation" system,enriching the research perspective on the logical relationship between environmental regulation competition,industrial structure adjustment and economic green transformation.(3)Exploring the impact of environmental regulation competition on economic green transformation through industrial structure adjustment through multiple methods and means.On the one hand,applying big data technology to the basic measurement of environmental regulation,scientifically deducing the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of environmental regulation competition,and quantitatively analyzing the dynamic impact and mechanism of environmental regulation competition on economic green transformation through industrial structure adjustment.On the other hand,by integrating simulation and scenario analysis,we can accurately predict the dynamic evolution results of economic green transformation under different scenarios.