Multi-party Conflicts Behind Environmental Regulation

The inefficiency of regulation caused by multi-party conflicts in the implementation of environmental regulations is an issue that needs to be addressed urgently in the context of increasing attention to environmental protection.However,existing research on the behavior and conflicts of multiple parties involved in the implementation of environmental regulations is scarce.This paper studies the factors that influence the implementation of environmental regulations from the perspective of governments and enterprises’ behavior and conflicts.Firstly,from the perspective of corruption,this article empirically studies the role of government rent-seeking between environmental regulation and the employment demand of enterprises and analyzes and examines their mechanisms that affect enterprises’ employment demand.Secondly,this paper refines the involved party of the conflicts and seeks to coordinate the conflicts of stakeholder interests related to environmental regulation from the perspective of tripartite conflicts between local governments,national government,and enterprises,and analyzes the impact factors of China’s incentive-compatible environmental regulation policies through the tripartite evolution game.Finally,this paper analyzes the impact of environmental regulations on enterprise import behavior and total factor productivity from the perspective of enterprise behavior in an open economy,and explores the hidden “pollution refuge hypothesis”.This paper systematically demonstrates the behaviors and impacts of various parties under environmental regulations and improves understanding of the design and implementation of effective environmental regulation policies.The findings demonstrate that: from the perspective of government rent-seeking behavior,we can conclude that,first,the intensity of environmental regulation exerts a negative impact on the employment of manufacturing enterprises through both output effects and substitution effects;second,corruption can also affect employment through both output effects and substitution effects and can weaken the effects of the intensity of environmental regulation;finally,the impacts of the intensity of environmental regulation and rent-seeking on the employment of manufacturing enterprises are heterogeneous across enterprises due to differences in enterprise-scale,corruption tolerance,and ownership structure.From the perspective of interest conflicts between the national government,local governments,and enterprises,we can conclude that,first,supervision and punishment from the national government can regulate enterprise behavior,improving the possibility of enterprise compliance,and improving the implementationof environmental regulations.Therefore,it will help the parties to achieve an ideal evolutionary stable state.At the same time,reducing supervision costs and increasing penalties can improve the willingness of the national government to implement supervision.Moreover,although the national government’s decision-making may also take into account the employment losses caused by environmental regulations,it is more dependent on the comparison between supervision costs and penalties,rather than on the impact of enterprise employment.Finally,the intergovernmental interest conflicts caused by economic decentralization in China will reduce the willingness of local governments to enforce environmental regulations.Thus,motivating local governments through punishment and rewards is the key to the effective implementation of environmental regulation policies in China.From the perspective of enterprise import behavior under globalization,we can conclude that the increasing stringency of environmental regulations prompts enterprises to improve imported product quality,rather than to transfer polluting industries abroad;thus,it does not pose a threat to the environment of neighboring countries.Besides,the increasing stringency of environmental regulations also leads to learning effects and improvements in imported product quality,thereby increasing enterprise productivity.Finally,the effects of the interaction between environmental regulations and import behavior on enterprise productivity are heterogeneous,as they depend on the type of ownership and the location of enterprises.