Comprehending the environmental regulation, biased policies and OFDI reverse technology spillover effects: a contingent and dynamic perspective

The carbon reduction effect of "Going Global" strategy: an empirical perspective on the carbon emission efficiency of OFDI in China

Under the constraints of the "dual-carbon" objectives, how China can sustain economic development while concurrently achieving carbon emission reduction has become a pressing issue. With the rapid expansion of China's outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), elucidating its impact on carbon emission efficiency (CEE) assumes pronounced significance. Employing the systematic generalized method of moments (GMM) approach, based on panel data spanning the years 2006 to 2019 for China, this study primarily delves into the influence of OFDI on China's CEE. Furthermore, it probes into the mechanisms and asymmetries underpinning the relationship between OFDI and CEE. The principal findings are as follows: (1) augmentation of OFDI exerts a constructive effect on domestic carbon emission reduction, concomitantly yielding a discernible enhancement in CEE. A 1% increase in the magnitude of OFDI flow gives rise to a 0.009% improvement in CEE. (2) Mechanism verification reveals that heightened levels of OFDI operate through elevating green total factor productivity (GTFP), fostering optimal industrial structural adjustments, and invigorating green technological innovation, thereby elevating the CEE of the home country. (3) Asymmetry characterizes the impact of OFDI on domestic CEE, signifying a significant enhancement in regions with lower CEE while exhibiting less conspicuous effects in areas with higher CEE. This study furnishes policymakers with insights into leveraging OFDI to enhance CEE, thereby facilitating the attainment of the "dual-carbon" objectives.

Can fiscal decentralization and farmers' use of internent be the route to the digitalization performance in China? A novel approach towards unlocking the role of online marketing behavior and performance of agricultural products

It is believed that the respondents' disadvantageous positions and the information asymmetry that exists between them are the bottlenecks that contribute to the stagnation of trades and the poor revenue that respondents receive from agro-products. Digitalization and fiscal decentralization both play an important part in helping to increase the information literacy of respondents who live in rural areas. The purpose of this study is to investigate the theoretical effects that the digital revolution has had on environmental behavior and performance, and it also analyzes the part that digitalization plays in the process of fiscal decentralization. This study investigates the impact that farmers' usage of the Internet has on their information literacy, online sales behavior, and online sales performance using research data collected from 1338 farmers in China primarily produce pears. Primary data was collected and utilized to develop a structural equation model, using the partial least squares (PLS) and bootstrapping methods; according to the findings, the use of the Internet by farmers has a significant positive effect on the improvement of their information literacy, and it will promote their online sales of pear through the improvement of their information literacy. The results show that the use of the Internet by farmers will improve the online sales performance of pear due to the improvement of farmers' information literacy.

Assessing the impact of green tax reforms on corporate environmental performance and economic growth: do green reforms promote the environmental performance in heavily polluted enterprises?

Based on Porter's hypothesis and Pollution Shelter's hypothesis, this paper firstly constructs a mechanism of environmental protection tax law and corporate environmental performance. Secondly, it empirically examines the impact of green tax reform on corporate environmental performance and its internal mechanism through the difference in difference (DID) method. The study findings firstly reveal that environmental protection tax law significantly and progressively promotes the improvement of corporate environmental performance. Secondly, the heterogeneity analysis results show that the promotion effect of environmental protection tax law on corporate environmental performance is significant in enterprises with strong financial constraints and stronger internal transparency. The environmental performance improvement effect of the state-owned enterprises is stronger, which indicates that state-owned enterprises can set an example in the face of the formal implementation of the environmental protection tax law. In addition, the heterogeneity of corporate governance shows that the background of senior executives is an important factor affecting the effect of environmental performance improvement. Thirdly, the mechanism analysis indicates that the environmental protection tax law mainly promotes the improvement of enterprise environmental performance by strengthening the local government's enforcement rigidity, improving the local government's environmental concern, promoting enterprise green innovation, and resolving the collusion between government and enterprise. Further analysis shows that the environmental protection tax law based on the empirical results of this paper did not significantly trigger the phenomenon of cross-regional negative pollution transfer of enterprises. The findings of the study have important enlightenment on improving the green governance of enterprises and promoting the high-quality development of national economy.

Quantifying the effect of administrative approval reforms on SO2 emissions: a quasi-experiment in Chinese cities

The effects of the Administrative Examination and Approval System Reform on economic growth and entry of businesses have drawn much attention. However, few scholars pay attention to the impacts of this policy on SO₂ emissions. Keeping in view the existing research gap, a spatial difference-in-difference (SDID) model is employed to assess the effects of the Administrative Examination and Approval System Reform on SO₂ emissions in 297 Chinese cities during the period 1995-2020 from the perspective of spatial spillover effects. The results show that the establishment of Administrative Examination and Approval Center (AEAC) has significantly positive effects on the local SO₂ emissions. The significant indirect (spatial spillover) effects are confirmed. That is, the establishment of AEAC of a given city has a significant positive impact on the SO₂ emissions of neighboring cities. The findings are confirmed by several robustness tests. Our study findings have significant implications for the cross-border coordination of environmental policies that aim to improve the quality of the environment across borders.

Influencing factors of farmers' land transfer, subjective well-being, and participation in agri-environment schemes in environmentally fragile areas of China

One of the purposes of agri-environment schemes (AESs) is to persuade farmers to make good environmental contributions. Understanding the determinants of farmer behavior and the decisions they make regarding AESs is crucial because it helps policymakers create schemes with a broader reach and a higher likelihood of achieving environmental goals. This paper aims to explore the impacts of land transfer, farmers' subjective well-being, and participation in AESs in environmentally fragile areas of China by using data of 6840 sampled farmers obtained from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). A relatively novel approach of ordinary least square (OLS), the ordered probit model approach, and the mediation effect model is used to assess the association between the land transfer mechanism, subjective well-being, and participation in AESs. The model outcomes indicate that land transfer has a considerable influence on AES involvement and that it can boost farmers' subjective well-being. The findings of our study also indicate that the marginal effect of land transfer on the subjective well-being of nonpoor households is greater than that of poor households, and the impact degree of land transfer on the subjective well-being of farmers reveals a weakening trend from east to west regions. Local conditions should be taken as guidance to effectively coordinate the regional resource allocation.

Implementing a novel deep learning technique for rainfall forecasting via climatic variables: An approach via hierarchical clustering analysis

Variations in rainfall negatively affect crop productivity and impose severe climatic conditions in developing regions. Studies that focus on climatic variations such as variability in rainfall and temperature are vital, particularly in predominant rainfed areas. Forecasting rainfall is very essential in the agriculture sector due to the dependence of many people, while it is very complex to accurately predict rainfall due to its dynamic nature. This study aims to present a deep forecasting model based on optimized (Gated Recurrent Unit) GRU neural network to predict rainfall in Pakistan based on the 30 years of climate data from 1991 to 2020. The climatic variables were first extracted and then fine-tuned by eliminating outliers and extreme values from the data set for precise forecasting. Data normalization strategies were further utilized to adjust numeric values into a standard scale without distorting divergences or losing useful information. The proposed model achieved high prediction accuracy by maintaining minimal Normalized Mean Absolute Error (NMAE) and Normalized Root Mean Squared Error (NRMSE) compared to state-of-the-art rainfall forecasting models. Climatic variables used in the forecasting were evaluated in terms of correlation and regression analysis. The correlation results showed that temperature has a negative association and air quality variables have a positive association with rainfall in each quarter of the year. The second and third quarters of the year showed a high association with rainfall, whereas the air quality variables showed a lesser or no association with rainfall during the first and second quarters of the year. The results further showed a strong association of climatic variables with rainfall for all months of the year. The minimal loss achieved by the proposed model also demonstrated the feasibility of selected variables in precise forecasting of rainfall regardless of volatile climatic conditions.

Rural migration, governance, and public health nexus: Implications for economic development

With the deepening of rural aging and the increasing role of human capital in the non-agricultural employment labor market, this paper uses the data of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), ordinary least squares (OLS) and instrumental variable method (IV) to try to examine the impact of rural migrant workers' education on their parents' health. Since a rural family may include more than one child, a sample of migrant workers with a high education level is used in the benchmark regression, and a sample of migrant workers with a low education level is used to test the robustness of the relationship. The results showed that the education of migrant workers had a significant positive impact on parents' health. The sample with the least education was used for the robustness, and the results did not change. The IV-probit method is used to address potential endogeneity, and the results remain stable. Heterogeneity analysis shows that there are significant differences in the impact of migrant workers' education on the health of parents from different groups. This positive effect has a greater impact on the health of parents who are older, less educated, and do not live with their children. Mediation analysis shows that children's economic ability, captured by income and work type, and their parents' health behavior, captured by sleep, alcohol consumption, and physical examinations, mediate this relationship. Thus, migrant workers' education affects their parents' health mainly through relaxing budget constraints and improving their parents' health production efficiency. In addition, this paper also found that education of migrant workers may significantly increase parental depression. Based on the above analysis, this paper argues that increasing investment in rural education is conducive to improving the health of migrant farmers' parents, thereby promoting the transfer of rural labor to non-agricultural industries and cities, curbing the rapid rise in labor costs, and promoting the healthy development of the economy.

The impact of policy perception on technology transfer from boundary-spanning perspective-empirical evidence from Chinese technological enterprises

Technology transfer is an essential source of technological innovation for enterprises, which is conducive to the market transformation of patent achievements and the commercial application of new technologies. Building upon social capital theory, all data analyses were performed using SPSS 22.0 and Amos software with the multiple linear regression method. The study explores the mechanism of policy perception to obtain the technical resources needed for enterprise development through boundary-spanning behavior, with a moderating effect of inter-organizational trust and technological potential gap. The study uses survey data from 125 enterprise teams of 42 technology-based enterprises in China. The results show that policy perceived usefulness and usability significantly promote technology transfer performance and boundary-spanning behavior plays a mediating role between them. Speaking of the influencing factors of technology transfer, technological potential gap significantly moderates the relationship between boundary-spanning and technology transfer performance. In contrast, inter-organizational trust positively moderates the relationship between boundary-spanning and technology transfer performance. The research provides theoretical reference and guidance for enterprises on using policy perception better to improve technology transfer performance in the institutional environment. It also helps inspire enterprises to better deal with the cooperative relationship between relevant stakeholders and achieve win-win cooperation.