Will China’s audit of natural environmental resource promote green sustainable development? Evidence from PSM-DID analysis based on substantial and strategic pollution reduction

Abstract

Countries around the world have become concerned about their responsibility to protect the environment and resources. In this paper, we established a model of multi-period PSW-DID (weighted propensity score matching- differences-in-differences) to test the effect of China’s audit of natural resource. We found that: (1) local governments had a strategic incentive to reduce pollution, they paid more attention to environmental performance linked to individual promotion than to green innovation and development. (2) Compared with the long-term and complexity of water pollution control, they paid more attention to air pollution treatment. (3) In the long run, the environmental audit was indeed beneficial to the improvement of environmental quality, but the time of taking effect was the second year (one-year lag). (4) In addition, because of the contradiction between the neglect of human capital and the timeliness of environmental supervision, the local government did not show substantial pollution reduction. Therefore, local officials should foster the long-term responsibility consciousness of green innovation and pay more attention to the integration of human capital. The audit of natural resources should establish a long-term mechanism, which could establish a complete accountability system or change off-office audit to interim audit. The construction of audit big data platforms should pay more attention to substantive characteristic data, such as data on population inflow, which is not only a paper score of air pollution. This study can reveal the dilemma of pollution prevention and control in China, urge local governments to promote the rational flow of human resources, improve the innovation level, and achieve substantive pollution control and efficiency enhancement of green development.

Green finance and corporate environmental investment: "Scale Up" or "Efficiency Up"?

“…How to achieve sustainable development under the background of low-carbon economy is a common problem facing the world today [ 3 , 4 ]. To achieve sustainable development, China’s economic development model requires both speed and quality, i.e., maintaining economic growth while avoiding over-exploitation of the environment and resources [ 5 , 6 ]. Therefore, the Chinese government has proposed policies such as low-carbon cities and green finance that take into account both economic development and environmental protection.…”

An exploratory and analytical study of a sample of control and audit professionals' opinions on green audit techniques and methods

“…The influencing aspects of the natural environment on the economy due to the increasing social and legal pressures (Chen, 2023;Ganau, 2020), as there has been a rising demand for disclosure of environmental policies and practices and the performance of the company concerned inside or outside the company (Sungkawati et al, 2023;Yuniwati et al, 2024). The environmental threats facing humanity in the twenty-first century include global warming and climate change, disaster risks, social inequality (Kabuye, 2019), unsustainable lifestyles (Eugene, 2018), and the urgent need to shift to an economy based on renewable energy (Li, 2022).…”