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The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on pollution emissions and how environmental regulation affects this relationship.

In the empirical research, the authors selected panel data for 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2019 as samples. First, the authors used the instrumental variable method to verify the existence of the above hypotheses in China. Then, the authors analyzed the moderating effect of different types of environmental regulations on the environmental effects of FDI. Next, in further discussion, the authors analyzed the difference between the environmental effect and the moderating effect in different time periods and regions, respectively. Finally, the authors discussed whether the different intensities of environmental regulations lead to the transfer effect of FDI in choosing investment destinations.

The result shows that FDI can help reduce pollution emissions and create a “pollution halo” effect, which is enhanced by command-and-control regulation but suppressed by market-based incentives. The heterogeneity analysis reveals that the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party has weakened the pollution halo effect of FDI, while the environmental effect of FDI in the eastern region is not significant, but in the middle and western regions, there is a significant pollution halo effect and a positive moderating effect of environmental regulations. Finally, further analysis reveals that FDI has a transfer effect under command-and-control environmental regulations.

First, the main purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between FDI and pollution emissions from the perspective of heterogeneous environmental regulation. Therefore, there is no detailed discussion on their effect mechanism of them. Second, limited by data, the authors adopt the single index to measure the stringency index of command-and-control and market-based incentive environmental regulations in China. The single index may not be able to fully reflect the intensity of regional environmental regulation, so the construction of a composite indicator is necessary. These shortcomings are the focus of the authors' future research.

Under the guidance of high-quality development, the conclusions above can provide reference for adjusting FDI policies and improving environmental regulation policies.

The innovations in this paper can be summarized as the following four dimensions: First, the authors use the instrumental variable (IV) method to address endogeneity in the relationship between FDI and pollution emission, which can further ensure the robustness of the research results and increases the credibility of the paper. Second, the authors distinguish between two types of environmental regulations to investigate their moderating effect on the environmental impact of FDI. Third, the authors consider the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of both the environmental effects of FDI and the moderating effect of regulation. Last, the authors analyze the spatial spillover of environmental regulation through the study of the transfer effect.

This article investigates the impact of foreign trade on carbon emissions of the member countries of the largest trade bloc, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

The aggregate bilateral trade with members of RCEP during the period 1991–2020 was considered for analysis. The study also examines the impact of foreign trade (between member countries) on economic development, represented by GDP per capita. Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel Granger causality test was conducted to understand the impact of foreign trade on GDP per capita and carbon emissions.

Results indicate that though foreign trade is heterogeneously Granger causing GDP per capita, it also aggravates carbon emissions in RCEP bloc.

The study is of significance to the policymakers in the member countries as it provides evidence to include climate impact in trade agreements. The wealthier RCEP member countries can support the green transition of low-income countries through transfer of eco-friendly technologies.

This study aims to examine foreign direct investment (FDI) factors and develops a rational framework for FDI inflow in Western European countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and Austria.

Data for this study were collected from the World development indicators (WDI) database from 1995 to 2018. Factors such as economic growth, pollution, trade, domestic capital investment, gross value-added and the financial stability of the country that influence FDI decisions were selected through empirical literature. A framework was developed using interpretable machine learning (IML), decision trees and three-stage least squares simultaneous equation methods for FDI inflow in Western Europe.

The findings of this study show that there is a difference between the most important and trusted factors for FDI inflow. Additionally, this study shows that machine learning (ML) models can perform better than conventional linear regression models.

This research has several limitations. Ideally, classification accuracies should be higher, and the current scope of this research is limited to examining the performance of FDI determinants within Western Europe.

Through this framework, the national government can understand how investors make their capital allocation decisions in their country. The framework developed in this study can help policymakers better understand the rationality of FDI inflows.

An IML framework has not been developed in prior studies to analyze FDI inflows. Additionally, the author demonstrates the applicability of the IML framework for estimating FDI inflows in Western Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate sustainable green economy in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 1990–2019 using a quantile regression approach, considering the nexus between urbanization, economic growth, renewable energy, trade and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.

The study used a dynamic panel quantile regression to investigate the conditional distribution of CO₂ emissions along the turn-points of urbanization, economic growth, renewable energy, trade and the regressors via quadratic modeling specifications.

The main findings are established as follows. There is strong evidence of the Kuznets curve in the nexus between urbanization, economic growth, renewable energy, trade and CO₂ emissions, respectively. Second, urbanization thresholds that should not be exceeded for sustainability to reduce CO₂ emissions are 0.21%, and 2.70% for the 20th and 75th quantiles of the CO₂ emissions distribution. Third, growth thresholds of 3.64%, 3.84%, 4.01%, 4.36% and 5.87% across the quantiles of the CO₂ emissions distribution. Fourth, energy thresholds of 3.64%, 3.61%, 3.70%, 4.02% and 4.34% across the quantiles of the CO₂ emissions distribution. Fifth, trade thresholds of 3.37% and 4.47% for the 20th and median quantiles of the CO₂ emissions distribution, respectively.

The empirical shreds of evidence offer policy implications in such that building sustainable development and environment requires maintaining the critical mass, not beyond those insightful thresholds to achieving sustainable development and environmentally friendly SSA countries.

Sustainable cities and communities in an era of economic recovery path COVID-19 mitigate greenhouse gas. The policy relevance is of particular concern to the sustainable development goals.

The study is novel considering the extant literature by providing policymakers with avoidable thresholds for policy formulations and implementations in the nexus between urbanization, economic growth, renewable energy and trade openness.

This paper aims to examine the question, “How do firm-level, home-country and host-country environmental performance (EP) affect the outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) of Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs)?”

The authors examine the relationships between EP and OFDI propensity and between EP and OFDI intensity using a sample of 359 Chinese firms in industries with a significant environmental footprint between 2009 and 2019 (2,002 firm-year observations) and a Heckman two-stage model.

This study shows that the propensity for OFDI by Chinese MNEs is significantly and positively related to the firm’s prior EP and the country-level EP of China. However, the amount of FDI invested is significantly and positively related to the firm’s prior EP and negatively related to the EP of the host country.

The findings suggest that FDI in a country by an MNE is determined by a combination of firm-level EP, home-country EP and host-country EP. This study finds that the decision to undertake FDI (propensity) and the decision about how much to invest (intensity) are determined by different factors. The propensity for FDI is determined by the home-country EP and firm-level EP. However, the intensity of FDI is determined by a combination of the host country EP and firm-level EP. A limitation is that this study only examines MNEs in China, so the findings may not apply to other countries.

This paper shows that MNEs’ EP is positively related to the propensity and intensity of their OFDI decisions. However, this paper shows that the home-country and host-country EP may also play an important role in determining the propensity or intensity of OFDI.

Due to an increase in energy demands, it has become vital to devise efficient energy policies. Literature has suggested multiple factors influencing the consumption of specific energy types. Among others, institutional quality (INQ) is another factor that can determine energy consumption. Given this, the current study aimed to investigate the impact of INQ on fossil fuel energy (FFE) and renewable energy consumption (REC).

The empirical analysis was conducted on 20 years (2000–2019) of data from South Asian economies, and regression among variables was established by employing the dynamic ordinary least square and fully modified ordinary least square models. The selection of both techniques is subject to the existence of cointegration identified by the Johansen cointegration test. Other pre-estimation techniques include cross-section dependence and unit root testing validating the estimation of coefficients in the long run.

The analysis mainly reveals the negative impact of INQ on FFE and the positive impact of INQ on REC. The authors further find the asymmetric impact of control variables including foreign direct investment inflow, economic growth, inflation rate, financial sector development and energy investment on the consumption of both types of energy.

Given the positive influence of INQ on REC, it is recommended to focus on improving the efficiency of institutions specifically those that are directly linked with energy-related policies. A better INQ can ensure environmental sustainability by enhancing the consumption of renewable energy. Therefore, it is advised to exert more efforts to improve the INQ.

In view of the positive influence of INQ on REC, it is recommended to focus on improving the efficiency of institutions specifically that are directly linked with energy-related policies. A better INQ can ensure environmental sustainability by enhancing the consumption of renewable energy. Therefore, it is advised to exert more efforts for improving the INQ.

This study offers robustness to the empirical findings of existing literature on the INQ-REC nexus and complements the underdeveloped literature on the INQ-FFE relationship.

While implementing green innovation-driven strategies when facing growing grim environmental problems and the realistic demands of achieving high-quality development is increasingly urgent, changing abruptly is inevitably detrimental to the smooth functioning of social and economic development. Restrained by resources, innovation-driven strategy is a huge strategy for an organization to shift from traditional technological innovation to green innovation. Supports and implementation in green technology investment would necessarily crowd out other business investment and lead to reduction of innovation outputs and mount of financial uncertainty. Under the guidance of harmonious balance, the equilibrium allocation between green research and non-green counterpart is badly needed to be addressed for decision-makers inside and outside the organizations. The differentiated inputs of them would lead to different effects on organizational performance in practice.

The authors first conducted a Hausman test on green research intensity (GRI) and innovation performance, economic performance, social performance, and environmental performance, respectively. Adopting the fixed effects model for estimation seems accurate, if there is no significant heteroscedasticity shown in the BP test. The authors then adopted the least square dummy variable method to handle individual heterogeneity (Xia et al., 2020). After controlling the industry effect and time effect simultaneously, the results were consistent with that of fixed effects model, thereby eliminating the impact of heteroscedasticity.

The authors construct a multi-dimensional performance system—innovation performance, economic performance, social performance, and environmental performance—to probe into the influence of GRI from the resource-based view and allocation theory. Different performance does not benefit equally from increasing the intensity of green research. Performance increase may squeeze out the quantity of total innovation but can compensate quality for knowledge spillovers of green technology. The organization's growth and long-term value may be beneficial from the increase, but not the short-term financial performance. While the relationship between GRI and social performance has the characteristic of reverse U-curve, there has to be some scale of green research to gain considerable and nonlinear environmental performance. Low level of green research may increase pollution until green research has cross over the inflection point. These relationships are intensely moderated by the environmental regulation.

Because of the focus of this study is on the organizational performance of green research, the analysis comes with some limitations that should be addressed in future research. Data were inter-professional, with large enterprises and small businesses innovating green technology at the same time. Though the hypotheses presented here were grounded in existing theoretical rationale, the generality of this study cannot be assumed. Multi-performance of green activities in small- and medium-sized businesses should be further explored. Additionally, concrete index of the corresponding evaluation system constructed here contribute more to practical activities of green innovation. Refinement of synergy performance index is the task for future work. Further, grounded in Chinese context, the authors' results could be compared with other scenario with institutional heterogeneity to provide detailed evidences for institutional theory. Future studies could also move forward to longitudinal case study to delicately investigate the performance differentiation of green research when in different development stage.

First, what and how the authors do is novel as the authors use listed Chinese manufacturing companies to probe into the complex relationship between GRI and multiple performance rather than discussing the performance of green innovation input from a single perspective merely. Second, the authors systematically define the performance as economic performance, environmental performance, social performance and innovation performance in depth, which consider adequately the tangible and intangible value as well as internal and external benefits of green research. And finally, in the context of environmental regulation, the study discusses the differentiation of the increase of green research intensity from the perspective of resource constraints, providing reference for optimizing the resource allocation in green and non-green research and solving the decoupling between earnest social appeal and sluggish or reluctant green behaviors.

The current study aims to ascertain the association between tourism development, economic growth and environmental quality by using the short-run and long-run autoregressive distributive lag model.

Tourism development has a major role to play in improving a nation’s economic growth. However, it is also blamed for exacerbating environmental pollution because of its massive use of energy (non-renewable energy).

The major findings of this research show that renewable energy (RE) use and gross domestic product (GDP) negatively impact carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in South Africa. Tourism arrivals and CO₂ emissions negatively impact GDP, while capital positively impacts GDP in the long run.

This research recommends the use of RE, since it reduces carbon emissions, and capital, as it remains the major driver of economic growth.

The originality of the current research is that it uses long-period annual time series data from 1971 to 2019 of South Africa, one of the largest tourist nations in Africa. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no studies have examined South Africa in this context and minimal research has been conducted to ascertain the impact of the tourism industry on the environment, despite the accusations directed toward it.

This paper examines the mediation role of green innovation in the relationship between corporate social responsibility and environmental performance of manufacturing firms in Ghana.

The paper chose African emerging markets and surveyed managers from manufacturing firms. With 301 questionnaires qualified for this study’s final analyses, the authors adopt the multiple regression with mediation models to estimates the nexus among study variables.

Results evidence that both corporate social responsibility and green innovation has a positive and significant impact on environmental performance. Interestingly, the authors find that corporate social responsibility significantly improves environmental performance through green innovation indicating that firms could essentially build their dynamic resource and innovation capabilities in sustainability leading to enhanced environmental performance.

This paper develops a dynamic resource-based view of firm environmental performance illustrating how firms use resources to build strategic capabilities for competitive advantage, which leads to improved environmental performance. The paper highlights the mediation role of green innovation on corporate social responsibility and environmental performance relationships.

This study's results provide significant insights to owners and managers of manufacturing companies to integrate corporate social responsibility and green innovation to ensure environmental performance and sustainability. Furthermore, policy makers should encourage green innovation when design sustainable development systems in the manufacturing industry.

The paper provides a valuable model showing how green innovation mediates corporate social responsibility to improve environmental performance and build competitive advantages considering both small, medium, and large manufacturing enterprises in emerging countries.

This paper aims to explore the impact of domestic market fragmentation on the innovation performance of enterprises and its mechanism from the perspective of market segmentation, a government behavior with Chinese characteristics.

In order to verify the theoretical hypothesis proposed in the previous article, that is, whether domestic market fragmentation can effectively improve the innovation performance of enterprises, this paper bases on the data of listed companies from 2010 to 2016, empirically testing the theoretical hypothesis by constructing a measurement model.

Domestic market fragmentation has a significant inhibitory effect on enterprise innovation performance. Domestic market fragmentation has heterogeneous effects on innovation performance of enterprises and regions. It is undeniable that domestic market fragmentation does have a certain support effect on state-owned enterprises but the support effect is achieved by distorting regional resource allocation and creating an unfair market environment.

Firstly, this paper explores the impact mechanism of domestic market fragmentation on corporate innovation performance from the perspective of market segmentation, a government behavior with Chinese characteristics, so as to expand and enrich the relevant research on enterprise innovation. Secondly, from the perspective of corporate innovation performance, this paper provides new evidence for the “curse effect” of domestic market fragmentation. Thirdly, this paper tries to shake the domestic market fragmentation support theory from the perspective of distortion effect brought by the “hand of support” of domestic market fragmentation.