Evolutionary game of environmental investment under national environmental regulation in China

Four-party evolutionary game analysis of enterprise environmental behavior

With the implementation of the "Rural Revitalization Strategy" in China, it is common for enterprises to go to the countryside to develop business. However, enterprises often neglect the local environmental protection in rural areas while developing the economy to pursue profits. As the end of the national administrative system and the villagers' autonomous organization, the village committee needs to participate in monitoring enterprises' environmental behavior. With this in mind, this paper builds a game model of enterprises, grass-roots governments, farmers, and village committees and analyzes the impact of village committees, grass-roots governments, and farmers on enterprise environmental behavior. The conclusions are as follows: (i) it is difficult for the village committee to promote the positive environmental behavior of enterprises, which needs the supervision of the grass-roots government; (ii) Improving the coordination ability of village committees is conducive to reducing the burden of government supervision; (iii) Farmers' awareness of environmental protection can affect the environmental behavior of enterprises through the rights protection mechanism and reputation mechanism.

Exploring the influence of ecological relationship on knowledge interaction in green innovation cooperation

Green innovation cooperation (GIC) has become an important measure for sustainable development of enterprises. Based on the knowledge-based theory, knowledge interaction is a necessary mode of GIC. Exploring the influencing factors of knowledge interaction in green innovation cooperation is an important aspect to improve the performance of GIC. From the perspective of ecological theory, taking ecological relations as the lens, this paper further analyzes the differences of different ecological relations (competitive relationship, mutualism relationship, commensalism relationship, and parasitism relationship) affecting knowledge interaction in GIC. The results show that there are significant differences between different ecological relationships and knowledge interaction in GIC. Mutualism and commensalism contribute to knowledge interaction, while competition and parasitism may lead to the weakening of knowledge interaction and even the breaking of knowledge connection. In addition, the willingness to cooperate in green innovation is conducive to the knowledge interaction of GIC. Therefore, the paper proposes that green innovation partners should be selected based on ecological relationship. This paper reveals the theoretical connection between ecological relationship and knowledge interaction, provides valuable insights for promoting knowledge interaction in GIC, and expands the influencing factors of knowledge interaction.

The effect of the new Environmental Protection Law on corporate financialization in China

Using data from non-financial listed firms in China from 2008 to 2020, this study investigates the effect of the new Environmental Protection Law on corporate financialization based on the difference-in-differences model. Findings show that the law's implementation significantly increases the financialization behaviors of corporations in polluting industries. This effect remains robust after a series of robustness checks. Heterogeneity analyses suggest that the policy effect of the law is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises, enterprises with high fixed assets ratios, and enterprises in regions with excellent market competition. The new Environmental Protection Law also promotes the financialization of enterprises by increasing costs, reducing commercial credit financing capabilities, increasing risks, and hindering innovation. This article provides new evidence for understanding macro-environmental regulation and micro-firm effects.

Profit distribution and stability analysis of joint distribution alliance based on tripartite evolutionary game theory under the background of green and low carbon

Joint distribution is an advanced logistics organization model for improving the quality and efficiency of express logistics industry and achieves high-quality development of logistics, but the distribution of common profit has always been a key obstacle to the effective development of joint distribution. Based on the background of green and low carbon, this paper explores a fairer and more reasonable profit distribution scheme. The profit game between the government and the two types of member enterprises is analyzed. By focusing on how the government plays a role in inducing the joint distribution alliance to bring the green and low-carbon requirements into the profit distribution, the strategy evolution process of the three parties, the factors affecting the profit distribution and the stability of alliance are discussed through the establishment of "government-member enterprise A-member enterprise B" tripartite evolutionary game model. Finally, the evolutionary game model is numerically simulated based on system dynamics. It is found that (1) it is necessary for the government to guide and motivate the alliance to create internal incentives and constraints. The effect of government subsidies and rewards to member enterprises is greater than the penalties for member enterprises. (2) The member enterprises are likely to conspire together to defraud government subsidies and rewards, carry out "free riding" and other speculative activities, which makes it necessary for the government and the alliance to establish supervision mechanism, information disclosure mechanism, and property rights protection system. (3) The willingness of member enterprise to positively cooperate will increase with the increase of the additional benefit coefficient, the proportion of profit distribution and the importance of environmental benefit factor; and will decrease with the increase of the cost of promoting green distribution operations.

What Is the Mechanism of Government Green Development Behavior Considering Multi-Agent Interaction? A Meta-Analysis

Worsening environmental problems have created more and more challenges for green development, and the government is often seen as an important guide in turning this situation around. A government generally enacts green development through green development behavior, but previous research has not revealed the mechanism of this behavior. In addition, the multi-agent interaction between the government and green development behavior also needs to be explored. Based on an integrated theoretical model, the authors of this study adopted a meta-analysis method to analyze 18 high-quality published pieces from 6 mainstream databases and described the mechanism of government green development behavior in exploring and thinking about multi-agent interactions. In addition, the authors of this study explored differences in the roles of central and local government green development behaviors and the moderating role of regional heterogeneity. The research results showed that: (1) Enterprise economic behavior, enterprise environmental behavior, enterprise social behavior, and public participation are all significantly positively affected by government green development behavior; (2) local government green development actions have stronger effects than central government actions; (3) regional heterogeneity moderates the effect of government green development behavior. Furthermore, the authors of this study propose relevant countermeasures and suggestions from the government’s point of view. This research provides a theoretical and practical reference for governments to better improve their environmental systems and environmental supervision.

Interplay of Environmental Regulation and Local Protectionism in China

Environmental regulation (ER) and local protectionism (LP) are important policy tools for Chinese local governments to improve the environment and promote growth, respectively, but we know little about their interplay in dealing with pollution-intensive industries and enterprises. Using spatial correlation analysis and spatial panel simultaneous equations models, we investigated the spatial characteristics and interactions of the ER and LP in China’s 285 prefectural cities. We found that the high-ER-intensity areas were spreading from the eastern to the central and western regions, and the patterns of LP transited from high in the north and low in the south to high in the west and low in the east. There was a negative correlation spatially between ER and LP. LP could inhibit the increase in ER intensity, while the continuously increasing ER intensity could restrict LP through the competitive behavior from the “race to the bottom” to the “race to the top” among local governments. The effect of ER restricting LP was significant from 2008 to 2013 and prominent in the east, which was dominated by “race to the top” competition, while LP had a greater inhibitory effect on ER in the central and western regions, which preferred to obtain tax revenues from pollution-intensive industries. The results imply that removing the roots of local protectionism, improving the environmental governance system, and formulating differentiated regional environmental regulatory measures will help local governments balance economic growth and environmental protection.

The Tripartite Evolution Game of Environmental Governance under the Intervention of Central Government

Environmental pollution management is about the sustainable development effects of enterprises and the quality of life of people. However, the frequent occurrence of various types of enterprises polluting the environment in recent years has revealed many problems, such as the lack of monitoring by relevant central agencies, the ineffective supervision by local governments, and the failure of public complaints. This paper considers the rent-seeking phenomenon of enterprises in pollution prevention and control, constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model between enterprises, local governments and central government, analyzes the evolutionary stability of each participant’s strategy choice, explores the relationship between the influence of each factor on the strategy choice of the three parties, and further analyzes the stability of the equilibrium point in the tripartite game system. The results show that there is no evolutionary equilibrium strategy in the current Chinese environmental governance system; the reward and punishment policies of the local government and central government have a guiding effect on the strategy choices of enterprises in a short period of time, but the guiding effect will gradually weaken after a period of time, and cannot completely curb the irregular strategies of enterprises; the dynamic reward scheme can effectively alleviate the fluctuation of the game system and make the strategy choices of enterprises converge to the ideal state.

Environmental Regulation, Environmental Decentralization, and Enterprise Environmental Protection Investment: Evidence From China

The microeconomic behavior of enterprises is influenced by the government system and its policies. In this article, we investigate how environmental regulation and environmental decentralization affect enterprise environmental protection investment using the data of China's listed companies from 2009 to 2020 and examine the effect of environmental decentralization on the relationship between environmental regulation and environmental protection investment. First, we find that there is a “U-shaped” relationship between environmental regulation and enterprise environmental protection investment. Second, the estimation results indicate that environmental decentralization can promote enterprise environmental protection investment. Finally, we further provide evidence to show that environmental decentralization has a negative moderating impact on the relationship between environmental regulation and enterprise environmental protection investment. Accordingly, the conclusion of this study is helpful to optimize the environmental decentralization management system, reasonably guide the local government behavior, alleviate the contradiction between environmental protection and economic development, and promote the green transformation of economic development mode.

Evolutionary game analysis of environmental pollution control under the government regulation

This paper studied a tripartite evolutionary game of stakeholders in environmental pollution control. Most previous studies on this issue are limited to a focus on system dynamics with two-party game problems and lack a spatial analysis of strategy evolution. The parameters adopted are too few, and the influencing factors considered are too simple. The purpose of the paper is to introduce more parameters to study, which will have an important impact on the strategy choices of participants and the evolution path of the strategy over time. We construct a tripartite evolutionary game model of sewage enterprises, governments and the public. We establish a payment matrix and replicator equations as our method, and we also implement parameter simulations in MATLAB. In summary, we found that the reward and punishment mechanism plays an important role in environmental pollution control. Specifically: intensifying rewards and penalties will help encourage sewage enterprises to meet the discharge standard and the public to participate in pollution control action. However, increased rewards will reduce government's willingness to adopt incentive strategies; Government's reward for public's participation in the action must be greater than the increased cost of participation; Reducing the cost of sewage enterprise can also encourage them to implement standard emissions. The research presented in this paper further improves standard emissions and designs reasonable reward and punishment mechanism.