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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the characteristics of environmental protection behaviours of community residents from the perspective of system dynamics.

Documentation method is used to collect the factors and environmental improvement intervention strategies that influence the environmental protection behaviours of community residents from the top journals. To analyse the characteristics of the environmental protection behaviours of community residents which are nonlinear and dynamic, system dynamics (SD) are drawn. The initial value for simulation is obtained from the investigation report of some communities in China by questionnaires method.

The simulation shows that a process of continuous and interactional feedback is formed among environmental improvement intervention strategies, living context, environmental behavioural intention and environmental protection behaviours. These influences affect how environmental protection behaviour is affected by frequency of community environmental publicity, frequency of community participation regulation and local government investment, all of which are significant and decrease successively. Living context and environmental behavioural intention, which are intervened by the three strategies, can promote community residents’ environmental protection behaviours and reduce the degree of environmental pollution in communities.

The goal of reducing the community environmental pollution may be achieved, because the community environmental management departments can use this system dynamics approach to intervene the environmental protection behaviours of community residents.

The nonlinear and dynamic interactions among influencing factors are illustrated for an in-depth understanding of the environmental protection behaviours of community residents in this study. In addition, the initial parameter value and correlation coefficients are obtained for simulation through the questionnaire survey given to Chinese community residents to avoid the subjectivity of system dynamics.

This paper analyses the relationship between environmental protection and mid‐term financial performance, focusing on when and why this relationship is positive. In particular, the paper disaggregates environmental protection, differentiating between environmental management practices, environmental proactivity and environmental performance of the organization.

It uses a cross‐section survey of 2,122 Welsh companies to gather information on environmental practices and the FAME database to collect data on accounting based financial performance. The paper uses regression analysis on a combined sample of 186 Welsh companies to evaluate the effect on performance of different types of environmental protection.

On the whole, the results show a positive effect of environmental protection on mid‐term financial performance. Financial performance has a positive and significant correlation with environmental proactivity and with environmental performance, while it has a no significant relation with environmental management.

The paper presents a disaggregated analysis of environmental protection in relationship with financial performance. The paper differentiates between environmental management practices, environmental proactivity and environmental performance of the organization in their relationship with financial performance.

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of media use on environmental protection behaviors among college students.

A total of 182 college students from H universities, including science, engineering, liberal arts and art, were surveyed. This study used structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the data based on the proposed model, including media use, environmental protection awareness, environmental protection intentions and environmental protection behaviors, and then analyzed the impact of different gender, grade and disciplines on college students' environmental protection behavior by T-test and ANOVA.

First, it can be seen from the structural equation model analysis that media use has a significant impact on environmental protection awareness and environmental protection intention of college students, while media use has no significant direct impact on their environmental protection behaviors, but environmental protection intention has a mediating effect between media use and environmental protection behaviors. Second, the analysis of control variables explained that gender and disciplines have no significant impact on college students' environmental protection behaviors, while grades do.

Research on media use on environmental protection behavior was limited. This study proposed a new model of the impact of media use on environmental protection behavior and deeply analyzed the effect of media use from the perspective of environmental protection behavior. In addition, this study put forward research suggestions from the perspective of media publicity and environmental protection, hoping that the research conclusions could provide a basis and reference for ecological environment construction.

This study aims to deem the new policy – talk for environmental protection – promoted in the second half of 2014 to be the exogenous event and adopts PSM and DID to verify whether and how the central government’s mechanism of supervision of environmental enforcement improves firm environmental performance and reveals the micro effect and working mechanism of the supervision of environmental enforcement.

The researchers first select reasonable control groups for target districts by means of PSM, then apply DID to compare corporations in the treatment group with those in the control group for the change of environmental performance before and after the talk for environmental protection, so as to evaluate the micro-level effect of such talks on corporate environmental performance; after that, the research examines the working mechanism of such talks on corporate environmental performance; then, it goes a step further to find out the environmental impact of such talks on corporations of different natures of property right.

It is found from the research that the talk for environmental protection will effectively improve the environmental performance of corporations in the target districts, and the improvement of environmental performance in state-owned corporations in the target districts will be more evident. However, such improvements, to a certain extent, are achieved by reducing the output value, and corporations do not increase environmental investments from a long-term perspective.

First, the targets of the talk for environmental protection are mainly principals of municipal governments, but the research expands the scope to the whole province due to the small sample at the municipal level. Despite evidences showing that such a pressure of supervision impacts the whole province, the results obtained based on the data at the municipal level will be accurate. Second, the research selects a relatively short research period. Third, due to the limited data on corporate environmental performance in China, the research selects only listed companies from key monitored and controlled firms by state.

First, for the central government, environmental policy making is not the end of its job; it shall also supervise local governments’ work at environmental governance and properly handle its relationship with local governments. Second, for the local governments, in the course of implementing environmental policies, they should not only strengthen law enforcement but keep the continuity of law enforcement to avoid moving law enforcement. Third, in the long run, corporations must start from the source of production to enhance environmental governance and make cleaner production, so as to keep boosting corporate competitiveness and their ability of fighting risks.

First, the research innovatively provides empirical evidence about the effect of China’s supervision of environmental enforcement. Previous studies on this topic are mostly theoretical discussions only, while this research makes the talk for environmental protection the exogenous event about the supervision of law enforcement and achieves breakthroughs in empirical studies of administrative enforcement supervision. Second, the research pushes the studies on the implementation effect of environmental policies from a medium level to a micro level. Third, the research achieves some breakthroughs in the data for measuring corporate environmental performance.

Due to environmental externalities, micro-enterprises with profit-seeking features do not develop sufficient motivation for environmental governance. In a fiscally decentralized system, local environmental protection authorities perform environmental supervision, and the intensity of the regulations that they implement has an important influence on corporate environmental governance. Based on the promotion tournament framework, this paper aims to discuss the driving mechanism of corporate environmental governance using turnover of environmental protection department directors (EPDDs) as an indicator.

Using samples of A-share companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges from 2007 to 2014, this paper examines the impact of EPDD turnover on corporate environmental governance and its underlying mechanism.

The results show that corporate environmental governance exhibits a political periodicity that changes with the turnover of the EPDD, and the periodicity remains after controlling for the influence of changes in provincial party secretary and governor. Internal mechanisms analysis indicates that, without financial independence, local environmental protection departments rely on increasing sewage charges, not environmental protection subsidies, to promote corporate environmental governance. Further, considering heterogeneity among officials, it finds that the younger a new EPDD is, the more pronounced the periodicity of corporate environmental governance. However, there is no significant difference between in-system and out-system turnover.

In general, this paper describes the mechanisms of corporate environmental governance from the perspective of political economics, and the results have implications for the potential improvement of the government’s environmental supervision functions and the development of ecological civilization in China.

Reviews trends in environmental protection and sustainability in Latvia and introduces a programme in this field at the University of Latvia in Riga. Concludes that regional changes are necessary.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the structure of local government environmental expenditures by purpose, term and economic type, as well as the sources of their financing.

Research and data analysis were carried out on the basis of relevant sources of data gathered from the publicly available decisions on annual statements of accounts for 2011, published on local governments’ internet pages.

The main domains of expenditures are pollution abatement, waste and wastewater management and protection of biodiversity. The most of expenditure relates to operating expenses, while only a few percent relates to long-term investments. The most of environmental protection expenditures are financed from the local government organization's (LGO) general budget.

In the field of environmental protection, the most significant direct responsibility lies with local governments. On the other hand, information on the structure of environmental protection income and expenditures at the local government level is very limited and highly defragmented. The study may represent a starting point for further research in this field.

The methodology and the results reported in this research could be used for exploring environmental policy of LGOs in other European countries.

The general objectives of environmental protection by the year 2000 are: o basic control of environmental pollution o enhancement of environmental quality of major cities o co‐ordination of environmental, economic and social development. Proposals are listed and suggestions for the main measures to be undertaken are given for the advances that should be made by 2000 with respect to: (1) cities and economic areas; (2) industrial pollution; (3) pollution and construction of rural environment; (4) use and conservation of natural resources; (5) conservation of the water supply; (6) protection of the marine environment; (7) scientific and technological progress and environmental education; and (8) environmental management.

As the world began to witness an unprecedented rate of environmental destruction, economists and international institutions have been toiling away for decades, making every effort to dissect the dynamics of the relationship between the environment and the economy. Many claims have preached that there is a trade-off between environmental wellbeing and economic prosperity, where economic growth would be hindered by environmental protection. As we continue to neglect nature, will the world be capable of maintaining infinitely growing economies without falling into a deficit of natural resources? The foundation of all forms of economic growth springs from nature. Therefore, this study aims to explore the true impact of environmental protection policies on economic performance, and claims that well-designated environmental policies would only strengthen economies.

This study aims to investigate the impact of environmental protection policies on gross domestic product (GDP) growth utilizing a selected sample of 18 OECD countries. Fixed effects panel regression was conducted for the sample from 1998 to 2015.

Findings suggest that an increase in the environmental protection stringency is associated with an increase in GDP in the long-run. Whereas in the short run, more stringent environmental policies have been shown to have a questionable impact on GDP, brought to light by the mixed results portrayed in the short-run data.

While it is true that this study has utilized data from the The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the findings could be applicable to countries of the MENA region. This is due to the fact that GDP levels of OECD countries and Middle East and North African (MENA) countries have been converging over the past few decades. The convergence suggests that both regions seem to be following similar trends since the year 1990, with an increasing similarity in trend over the years.

This paper empirically proves that the protection of nature is necessary for the sustenance of long-term economic growth. This study also provides an approximate time range of when the economic gains of environmental protection would be realized, specifically in the beginning of a green growth transition. This makes the study findings accurately relevant to Arab countries, where providing a time range is necessary to alleviate some the uncertainty of policymakers in the MENA region towards environmental policies.

Soil is a non-renewable and increasingly deteriorating resource, yet it is barely protected by European Union (EU) legislation. This constitutes a puzzling gap within the otherwise encompassing and progressive environmental policy of the EU. To explain the integration resistance of soil protection, I draw on insights from rationalist and sociological institutionalist theory. The institutional rigidity of the community method of environmental decision-making limits policy change to favorable interest constellations, but this constraint is usually compensated by agenda competition among the national environmental pioneers. However, successful agenda-setting depends on the skillful combination of political venues and issue frames. Matters of land politics, such as soil protection, are difficult to frame in terms that make them suitable for European policy venues. The theoretical argument is illustrated using an in-depth case study of the agenda-setting, negotiation, and eventual withdrawal of the ill-fated proposal for an EU soil framework directive, with a focus on the changing role of Germany. Reframing of soil politics as locally bound and as essentially national affair, subnational actors extended the conflict to include the German federal chamber as policy venue. As a result, Germany turned from “pusher by example” and first mover to “defensive front-runner,” successfully pursuing a blocking strategy.