The Impact Of Resource Industry Dependence On Environmental Total Factor Productivity Growth

The over-dependence on the resource-based industry makes the resource-based regions face the dual problems of the slowing economic growth and the worsening environmental pollution.Under the dual pressure of the economic development and the environmental protection,the intensity of the government-led formal environmental regulation and the public-led informal environmental regulation is increasing day by day,which undoubtedly brings more formidable challenges to the socio-economic development of the resource-based regions.It is a necessary extension of the "resource curse" proposition to examine the impact of the resource industry dependence on the environmental total factor productivity(TFP)growth from the perspective of the environmental regulation.And it can provide important reference for how to realize the "win-win" of the economic benefit and the environmental benefit in the resource-based regions under the constraint of resources and environment.Therefore,this paper first theoretically discusses the mechanism of the impact of resource industry dependence on the environmental TFP growth from the perspective of the environmental regulation.Then,the data envelopment analysis(DEA)model based on the frontier of non-convex environmental technology is used to measure the growth rate of environmental TFP in Chinese provinces.On this basis,under the condition of considering the threshold effect of the formal environmental regulation and the informal environmental regulation,the nonlinear influence of resource industry dependence on the environmental TFP growth is empirically investigated.First of all,from the perspective of the environmental regulation,this paper makes a theoretical analysis on the influence mechanism of resource industry dependence on the environmental TFP growth.The "resource curse" effect of resource industry dependence on the environmental TFP growth is mainly caused by the pollution emission effect and the innovation crowding-out effect.On one hand,the resourcebased industry is characterized by intensive pollution,which directly increases the pollution emission intensity of the resource-based regions.On the other hand,excessive reliance on the resource-based industry will produce a series of adverse effects on economic development and environmental protection,such as crowding out innovative sectors,innovation capacity and innovation behavior,which will eventually drag down the environmental TFP growth.The threshold effect of the environmental regulation is mainly caused by the structural adjustment effect,the resource redistribution effect and the technology innovation effect.More stringent environmental regulations will enhance the transformation and adjustment of the resource-based industry,drive the optimization and adjustment of the internal structure of the industry and the structure of factor inputs,and thus improve the overall cleanliness and production efficiency of the industry.At the same time,the enhancement of the environmental regulation intensity will promote the overall improvement of the pollution reduction and the economic efficiency by eliminating some inefficient and polluting enterprises and concentrating social resources on the enterprises with higher efficiency and cleaner production.An increase in the environmental regulatory intensity will also force resource industry sectors to seek technological improvements and green technological innovations to reduce environmental compliance costs.Technological progress will further enhance the production efficiency while promoting pollution reduction.Furthermore,based on the non-convex data envelopment analysis(DEA)model,this paper calculates the environmental TFP growth in China's provinces,and makes a comparative analysis of the environmental TFP growth between the resource-based regions and the non-resource-based regions.It is found that,thanks to the acceleration of the environmental TFP growth in the non-resource-based regions,the environmental TFP growth in China presents a dynamic characteristic of "first suppression then uplift".By comparison,the environmental TFP growth in the resource-based regions showed a declining trend during the observation period,while that in the non-resource-based regions showed an obvious upward trend from 2006 after a slight decline(2002–2005).Since 2004,the environmental TFP growth in the resource-based regions has been lower than that in the non-resource-based regions,and the gap between the two types of regions has widened sharply.Then,based on the theoretical analysis and the measurement results of the environmental TFP growth,and taking the formal environmental regulation and the informal environmental regulation as the threshold variables,this paper adopts the panel threshold regression estimation method,which could incorporate the endogenous problem of the model,to conduct an empirical investigation on the impact of resource industry dependence on the environmental TFP growth,makes.The results show that both from the perspective of the government's attention to the environmental problems and from the perspective of the government's enforcement of the environmental regulations,the formal environmental regulations will significantly affect the role of resource industry dependence on the environmental TFP growth,that is,when the intensity of the formal environmental regulation exceeds the threshold value,the negative effect of resource industry dependence on the environmental TFP growth is weakened and even turned into a positive effect.In terms of the informal environmental regulation,whether from the perspective of public attention to the environmental problems or from the perspective of public implementation of the environmental protection supervision,the informal environmental regulation will affect the effect of resource industry dependence on the environmental TFP growth,that is,when the intensity of the informal environmental regulation exceeds the threshold value,the inhibitory effect of resource industry dependence on the environmental TFP growth is weakened.Finally,based on the results of theoretical and empirical analysis,this paper puts forward that only by optimizing the industrial structure,improving the level of opening to the international world,enhancing innovation capacity,improving the formulation and the implementation of the formal environmental regulations,standardizing and encouraging the informal environmental regulations,can the green transformation and development of resource-based regions be effectively promoted.