“…In summary, the outcomes of our rigorous analysis affirm that the COVID-19 crisis has indeed exerted an adverse influence on environmental governance, aligning with prior research that has underscored the detrimental consequences of the pandemic on environmental policies and regulations [ [98] , [99] , [100] ]. Importantly, this conclusion remains robust even when additional control variables are taken into account, and the sample is stratified into various subgroups based on factors such as firm size and the developmental status of the country.…”