Search results

In a state capitalist country such as China, an important influence on company reporting is the government, which can influence company decision-making. The nature and impact of how the Chinese government uses its symbolic power to promote corporate environmental reporting (CER) have been under-studied, and therefore, this paper aims to address this gap in the literature by investigating the various strategies the Chinese government uses to influence CER and how political ideology plays a key role.

This study uses discourse analysis to examine the annual reports and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports from seven Chinese companies between 2007 and 2011. And the data analysis presented is informed by Bourdieu's conceptualisation of symbolic power.

The Chinese government, through exercising the symbolic power, manages to build consensus, so that the Chinese government's political ideology becomes the habitus which is deeply embedded in the companies' perception of practices. In China, the government dominates the field and owns the economic capital. In order to accumulate symbolic capital, companies must adhere to political ideology, which helps them maintain and improve their social position and ultimately reward them with more economic capital. The findings show that the CER provided by Chinese companies is a symbolic product of this process.

The paper provides contributions around the themes of symbolic power wielded by the government that influence not only state-owned enterprises (SOEs) but also firms in the private sector. This paper also provides an important contribution to understanding, in the context of a strong ideologically based political system (such as China), how political ideology influences companies' decision-making in the field of CER.

In the face of climate change, environmental impact assessment (EIA) and strategic environmental assessment (SEA) are expected to translate global or national mitigation and adaptation targets to project and plan levels of decision-making. This paper aims to examine how to transform China’s EIA procedures to accommodate consideration of climate change and what constraints might be for doing so.

The main methodology used in this paper is doctrinal research, which is the primary legal methodology to find the law and interpret and analyse the document. Theoretical research is applied to analyse the ideas and assumptions of the mainstreaming approach. Comparative research is done to consider relevant international experiences.

Despite well-founded rationale for the mainstreaming approach, entrenched institutional, legal and technical obstacles cannot be neglected in the context of China. Urgent needs to fix existing EIA/SEA loopholes and improve the general enabling environment are also highlighted as a fundamental aspect of mainstreaming.

The potential of mainstreaming climate change into China’s EIA procedures remains largely unexplored. As a ground-breaking work from China’s perspective, the findings of this paper can serve as an important foundation for future research from legal and other perspectives.

As the contradiction between economic development, resource and environment has become increasingly prominent, low-carbon competitiveness has received worldwide focus. This study aims to examine low-carbon competitiveness in 31 provinces (cities and regions) of China.

An evaluation index system for low-carbon competitiveness in China has been constructed, which is composed of 25 economic, social, environmental and policy indicators. To study the state of low-carbon competitiveness and resistance to China’ development of low-carbon competitiveness, this study uses a combination of the catastrophe progression model, the spatial autocorrelation model and the barrier method.

China’ low-carbon competitiveness gradually decreases from coastal to inland areas: the Tibet and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions are the least competitive regions, while the Shandong and Jiangsu provinces are the most competitive areas. The spatial correlation of the 31 provinces’ low-carbon competitiveness is very low and lacks regional cooperation. This study finds that the proportion of a region’ wetland area, the proportion of tertiary industries represented in its GDP and afforestation areas are the main factors in the development of low-carbon competitiveness. China should become the leader of carbon competitiveness by playing the leading role in the Eastern Region, optimizing the industrial structure, improving government supervision and strengthening environmental protection.

The paper provides a quantitative reference for evaluating China’ low-carbon competitiveness, which is beneficial for environmental policymaking. In addition, the evaluation and analysis methods offer relevant implications for developing countries.

Given the regional diversity in China, this study aims to provide an empirical evaluation of how organizational stakeholders (i.e. customers, employees, suppliers and shareholders) affect corporate environmental sustainability investment (ESI).

To empirically investigate the influence of organizational stakeholders on ESI, this study used regional-level data consists of Chinese A-share stocks for the years 2009–2019.

This study’s findings show that pressure from customers, employees and suppliers has a significant effect on corporate ESI, with customers being the most important stakeholder group. Shareholders, by contrast, have no significant influence on ESI. The influence of these pressures is more pronounced in developed regions (the east) than in less developed (the west) localities of China.

This study complements the stakeholder–institutional perspective by implying to consider the differentiated logics of the contesting stakeholders in the nonmarket operations.

Practically, this study poses that managers must realize the heterogeneity of pressures from stakeholders and the differentiated impact of these pressures keeping in view the institutional differences in different regions.

Our study reports initial empirical evidence that shows how regional differences influence the role of stakeholders in determining corporate environmental strategy.

To cope with climate change and achieve the dual carbon goal, China has actively promoted the implementation of carbon trading pilot policy, among which the power industry plays an important role in China’s carbon emission reduction work. The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of carbon trading policy on the energy efficiency of power industry and achieve the comprehensive goal of carbon emission reduction, carbon peak and carbon neutralization.

This paper constructs the difference-in-differences model based on 2012–2019 provincial data to study the impact of carbon trading policy on energy efficiency in the power industry and its effect path. Heterogeneity analysis was conducted to compare the effects of carbon trading policy in eastern, central and western regions as well as at different levels of power structures.

Carbon trading policy can significantly improve the energy efficiency of the power industry, and the policy effect is more significant in eastern and western regions and areas with high power structure. Mechanism analysis shows that carbon trading policy mainly influences the energy efficiency of power industry by environmental protection investment, power consumption demand and industrial structure.

This paper uses provincial panel data to deeply study the influence of carbon trading policy on energy efficiency of the power industry and its effect path. By constructing the difference-in-differences model, this paper empirically analyzes the governance effect of carbon trading policy. Meanwhile, it controls individual and time effects to solve the endogeneity problem prevalent in previous literature.

Legislation plays an essential role in addressing climate change in China. However, many barriers to formulating national legislation to address climate change have so far prevented its enactment. The bottom-up approach adopted in the international climate regime sets a good example. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the regional legislation to address climate change in China through exploring the following two questions: whether it is necessary to enact climate change legislation at regional level first and whether it is feasible to develop such regional legislation in the absence of national climate change law.

This paper analyses the necessity and feasibility of regional legislation to address climate change. Section 2 introduces the current legislative framework on climate change in China. Section 3 investigates whether it is better to push the legislative agenda at regional, rather than national level. Section 4 analyses the feasibility of establishing regional legislative systems. Section 5 explores the key issues in formulating and promoting regional legislation.

This paper concludes that it is necessary and feasible to pilot regional legislation before enacting national legislation. Under these circumstances, local governments can take the initiative to begin formulating regional legislation.

Addressing climate change needs immediate action and effective measures. It is, thus, necessary to reconsider the approach that China should adopt when developing legislation on climate change. This paper contributes to broadening current knowledge of regional climate change legislation in China.

After the 19th CPC national congress, Chinese Communist Party and the government put forward higher requirements for the development of coastal zones, and it is urgent to establish an integrated coastal zone management system, so as to better guarantee the construction of maritime powers and regional coordinated development. The purpose of this paper is to aim at re-examining and positioning China’s integrated coastal zone management.

This paper sorts out the current situation of coastal zone resources and environment, summarizes prominent problems and clarifies the path of comprehensive management of coastal zone based on the typicality and comprehensiveness of coastal ecosystem.

Coastal zone is a typical area of “life community shared among mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes and grass.” However, there are three prominent problems at present, namely, separation between land and sea, separation among industry sectors and separation among administrative jurisdictions. Coastal zone planning and legislation are important measures to realize the comprehensive management of coastal zone.

This paper puts forward some suggestions on the reform of coastal zone management from the perspective of planning and legislation.

This study aims to investigate the environmental effects of climate financial fragmentation in the form of emerging multilateral institutions.

Among the countries that have economic relations with China, those involved in climate finance cooperation are taken as the experimental group, and those not involved in other areas are taken as a control group. Using system generalized method of moments regression, the difference-in-differences method is used to test the environmental effects of climate finance cooperation of emerging multilateral institutions. In this way, this study explores the financial and trade mechanisms of cooperation among emerging multilateral institutions.

The results of this empirical study show that the cooperation of emerging multilateral institutions has a positive impact on the environment. Research results further reveal the financial and trade mechanisms of climate finance cooperation projects. When the invested countries are more likely to obtain international capital, environmental effects will be greater. However, trade intimacy could inhibit the improved environmental effects.

This research is one of the few studies to test the environmental effects of climate financial fragmentation empirically. This study provides a better understanding of the multilateral cooperation of emerging economic entities and China’s climate finance policy, thus providing evidence for the collaborative governance of global climate finance.

With the Chinese marine economy developing rapidly, the environmental problem has been occurring frequently, which needs green finance that supports energy conservation, environmental protection, and sustainable development to solve.

In this paper, the entropy method is used to measure the development level of green finance, the DEA-ML index is used to measure the green total factor productivity which is used to indicate the high-quality development level of the marine economy in 11 coastal provinces (cities), then the grey correlation degree between them whose result shows that there is a certain correlation between the two variables is calculated. The fixed-effect model was used to analyze the relationship between them.

The results show that the development level of green finance can promote the high-quality development of the marine economy, but there are still some problems in the process of green finance supporting the marine economy.

This paper seeks new growth drivers, green finance, for the high-quality development of the marine economy, which few scholars have studied.

This paper aims to study the motivations for purchasing protective products.

Empirical microeconomic research.

The results show that comparing with ordinary families, families vulnerable to environmental conditions, including prepregnant, pregnant and postpartum families, are not intended to consume more protective products. Among the above three types of families, postpartum families consume the most, followed by pregnant families, and prepregnancy families consume the least. The results also showed that a higher level of economic development, more prevalent Internet access and higher levels of education also increase the consumption of protective products.

New dataset and new empirical results.