The impact of environmental regulations (ER) on haze pollution control has been continuously debated in the field of sustainable development. This paper explores the direct and indirect threshold effects of ER on haze pollution, and five underlying mechanisms—technological innovation (TI), industrial structure (IS), foreign direct investment (FDI), urbanization (UR), and electricity consumption (EC)—are adopted to investigate the indirect threshold effects. Panel data, over the period 2008–2018, of 284 Chinese cities were used and the threshold effects were predicted endogenously based on the panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model. The results showed the following: (1) For the direct threshold effect, there exists a U-shaped relationship between ER and haze pollution. ER significantly reduced haze pollution when ER < 38.86 due to “cost effects”. However, ER increased haze pollution after the threshold owing to the “green paradox”, which was not significant. (2) For the indirect threshold effect, when TI = 0.37, IS = 39.61, FDI = 7.25, and UR = 42.86, the relationships between ER and haze pollution changed. The changes and corresponding reasons for the indirect threshold effects are discussed in detail. (3) After a comprehensive analysis, the threshold effects have obvious regional distribution characteristics and internal connections. Finally, based on the results, it is essential for governments to enact appropriate environmental regulatory policies and enhance inter-regional synergies in environmental governance.

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The relationship between haze pollution and insurance development is investigated based on the concentration of PM2.5 of 268 Chinese cities during 2009~2018. Subsequently, the effect of haze pollution on the development of insurance and the underlying mechanisms are also explored. The regional governance of haze pollution and its impact on insurance development is estimated by using a unified framework of two-stage least squares. The machine learning method-elastic network is adopted to filter the control variables and avoid multi-collinearity. The results show that haze pollution has an adverse effect on the insurance development through two important underlying mechanisms, residents’ emotions and economic development. Haze pollution affects residents’ emotions, and the impact coefficient is approximately equal to -0.18, which further inhibits residents’ participation in insurance. Moreover, pollution restricts residents’ budgets by hindering economic development, the impact coefficient is about -0.07, thus, the development of insurance is suppressed. These two negative effects exhibit regional variations, which gradually attenuate from eastern, western to the Chinese central region. The regional governance has a positive effect on haze pollution with the coefficient of -0.07, while impact coefficient of haze pollution on insurance development decreases to -0.02. The policy implication is that government supervision can formulate reasonable environmental and insurance policies based on the heterogeneity of regional development to alleviate haze pollution and promote insurance development.

Since the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee put forward the five development concepts of "innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing"for the first time, China has entered a new era of high-quality economic development, which has opened a new chapter in the paradigm of high-quality economic development in China. Driven by the new development concept, local governments at all levels have taken both measures of environmental regulation and green innovation to promote the high-quality development of urban economy, and explored the impact of environmental regulation and green innovation on the high-quality development of urban economy, in order to achieve a "double-win" situation of "green mountains and green hills" and "golden mountains and silver mountains" in China. In this paper, twelve major urban agglomerations are used as sample data from 2008 to 2020 in China, and the influence of environmental regulation and green innovation on the high-quality economic development of urban agglomerations is systematically investigated by constructing OLS linear regression model, threshold effect model and intermediary effect model. The results show that: ① Environmental regulation has a significant promotion effect on the high-quality economic development of urban agglomerations, and the environmental regulation of southern urban agglomerations has a stronger promotion effect on the high-quality economic development of urban agglomerations than that of northern urban agglomerations. In addition, in order to avoid the problem that the estimation results are biased by endogenous environmental regulation, the conclusion obtained by constructing the lagging phase of environmental regulation as a tool variable is basically consistent with the original model, which proves the robustness and reliability of the original model. ② The influence of environmental regulation on green innovation shows an L-shaped relationship, in which the environmental regulation of southern urban agglomerations has a greater inhibitory effect on green innovation than that of northern urban agglomerations, while its promoting effect is weaker than that of northern urban agglomerations. Overall, the environmental regulation of southern urban agglomerations has a greater relative influence on green innovation than that of northern urban agglomerations, which shows that under the background of high-quality development of "green mountains and green hills" and "golden mountains and silver mountains" in China, the national and northern and southern urban agglomerations are all affected by this macro-policy environment. ③Environmental regulation plays a significant role in promoting the high-quality development of urban agglomeration economy, which is partly realized through green innovation, and environmental regulation plays a leading role; In addition, the green innovation ability of northern urban agglomeration plays a greater role in high-quality economic development than that of southern urban agglomeration, which shows that green innovation plays an important role in promoting high-quality economic development of northern urban agglomeration. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, environmental regulation and green innovation have played a more and more significant role in promoting the high-quality economic development of urban agglomerations. To realize the beautiful long-cherished wish of high-quality economic development of "Jinshan Yinshan" and "Green Water Qingshan", we not only need local governments to make scientific policies according to the location of urban agglomerations, make reasonable policies according to the industrial structure, coordinate inter-city relations within urban agglomerations, and coordinate the coordinated development of regional economies, but also need to further adjust measures to local conditions, make policies according to local conditions, and strengthen environmental regulation policies in a reasonable and orderly manner under the top-level design and guidance of the central government.

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