Research on Green Total Factor Productivity of Yangtze River Economic Belt Based on Environmental Regulation

Abstract

With the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization, the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is facing many environmental problems that need to be solved in the process of development. This paper aims to analyze the environmental governance effects of nine provinces and two municipalities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2009 to 2018. Firstly, based on the input-output index, the slacks-based measure (SBM) undesirable model and Malmquist (ML) index were used to measure the green total factor productivity (GTFP) of the YREB from 2009 to 2018. The results showed that the technological progress index contributed the most to the GTFP of the YREB, followed by the pure technical efficiency index and the scale efficiency index. Environmental regulation has no significant impact on the GTFP of the YREB. Secondly, by analyzing the effect of environmental governance in the YREB, the results show that the main reasons for the ineffective environmental governance in the YREB are the redundant input of environmental resources, excessive unwanted output, and low harmless treatment rate of municipal solid waste, rather than the low level of urban environmental management. Finally, this paper provides recommendations for the ineffective provinces and municipalities of the YREB to further optimize the input-output factors of environmental governance.

Impact of Industrial Structure Upgrading on Green Total Factor Productivity in the Yangtze River Economic Belt

“…This shows that, with the enhancement of environmental awareness and the improvement of environmental protection regulations in various regions, enterprises in various regions have strengthened self-discipline and minimized the emission of pollutants. This indicates that the industrial structure upgrading has a significant spillover effect on GTFP [ 44 ]. The explanatory variable industrial structure rationalization (ISR) estimation result is not significant.…”

Evaluation and Influencing Factors of Agricultural Green Efficiency in Jianghuai Ecological Economic Zone

“…On the other hand, the environment from the perspective of influencing factors, agricultural technology investment, agricultural machinery level, agricultural human capital investment and agricultural financial expenditure level positively affect the agricultural green production efficiency. In contrast, natural disasters and agricultural water conservancy facilities have a positive affect [33]. The improvement of the agricultural green production efficiency shows a negative correlation.…”

The inhibitory effect of agricultural fiscal expenditure on agricultural green total factor productivity

“…Fang et al 15 believed that the government's agricultural subsidy system can promote the green agricultural development. In addition, crop insurance, as an effective risk protection mechanism, can significantly increase agricultural green total factor productivity, many scholars, such as Li et al 16 , Huang et al 17 and He et al 18 carried out analysis based on this.…”