Environmental governance and employment effects: An empirical research based on mediating effect model

Abstract

In recent years, the problem of large-scale production suspension of domestic enterprises and unemployment of laborers brought about by environmental governance is becoming increasingly serious. How to reduce the negative externalities of environmental governance has become an urgent practical problem that needs to be solved. Based on the Cobb-Douglas production function model, this paper introduced the mediating effect model with technological innovation as the intermediate variable to study the impact of environmental governance on employment. We chose Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas with serious pollution as research objects, and used the panel data from 2005 to 2015 for empirical test. The results show that environmental governance has a positive effect on employment, and the high-intensity environmental governance will stimulate technological innovation, thereby stimulating employment growth. In the process of environmental governance, decision-making departments can not only effectively control environmental pollution by promoting technological innovation, but also reduce unemployment caused by environmental governance.

The more employment the better？– A Study of the Efficiency of the Carbon Emissions Trading Pilot on Labour Allocation

“…Scholars believe that market-based environmental regulations have a positive impact on employment when compared to mandatory environmental regulations. The CET pilot work in China significantly increased the employment scale in the pilot areas (Jian et al 2018;Gao et al 2019;Li et al 2019;Lin et al 2021), which had a positive spillover effect on employment in the surrounding areas (Yu & Li 2021) and raised rural residents' incomes . According to the various mechanisms that affect employment, environmental regulations can be divided into "expense" and "investment" environmental regulations.…”