The impact of government preferences and environmental regulations on green development of China's marine economy

doi:10.1016/j.eiar.2020.106522

Environmental Impact Assessment Review

Volume 87, March 2021, 106522

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2020.106522 Get rights and content

Highlights

•
The influence mechanism of environmental regulation on the green development of Marine economy is explored.
•
A Marine -GML index based on the dual effects of resource and environment is constructed.
•
Environmental regulation has a lag in promoting the green development of Marine economy.

Abstract

Green development is the fundamental way for high-quality development of marine economy. Achievement of green development goals of marine economy depends on the local government's decision-making preferences and reasonable marine-related environmental regulatory instruments. Based on 2007–2016 panel data of China's coastal provinces, this paper adopts the differential GMM(Gaussian Mixture Model) model to empirically analyze the impact of government preferences and environmental regulations on green development of marine economy. The results indicate that: lag exists in the promotion of environmental regulation on green development of marine economy.The impact of government preferences varies, in which, industrial preferences have a negative effect on green development of marine economy,while environmental preferences have a positive effect.The joint action of industrial preference and environmental preference inhibits green development of marine economy, while that of environmental preference and environmental regulation plays a promotion role. Different government preferences indicate different impacts in different regions. Environmental preference promotes the green development of marine economy in the Bohai Bay region, while industrial preference suppresses it. Both industrial preference and environmental preference in the Yangtze River Delta region have promotion effect, while only environmental preference in the Pan-Pearl River Delta region does so. Therefore, the government should establish a more complete official examination system, improve the marine environmental regulation system, and formulate differentiated green development policies for marine economy.

Introduction

Government preference has always been viewed by academia as an important factor affecting the quality of marine economic (Wang et al., 2015). In the context of the new era, China no longer simply pursues “quantity” increment, but values improvement of “quality” more in marine economic development goals (Ping, 2018), attaching more importance to sustainable use of marine resources and marine ecological environmental protection.Therefore, government's scientific decision choice becomes a key factor deciding better efficiency of marine economic development. The preference choice of local government makes an impact on green development of the local marine economy via environmental regulation. Environmental regulation has dual impacts on green development of marine economy. On the one hand, there is a “promotion effect” (J. Regul. Econ., 2009). Implementation of environmental regulation will stimulate enterprises' vitality in green technology innovation, reduce energy consumption and lower pollution, thereby promoting improvement of marine ecological environment. On the other hand, there is an “inhibitory effect” (Michael, 1995). Implementation of environmental regulations increases enterprise production costs and hinders green development of marine economy. In recent years, China has carried out a series of practices in improving the marine economic development level, but pollution of the marine ecological environment remains severe. This paper selects “total factor productivity of marine economy” that can both reflect marine economic development and demonstrate marine ecological governance as the standard for measuring green development level of marine economy, to analyze the current status of green development of China's marine economy. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: Does heterogeneous government preferences and environmental regulations promote or inhibit green development of marine economy? Do the interactions between different government preferences and environmental regulations boost green development level of marine economy? To answer the above questions, this paper constructs a mechanism of action between government preferences, environmental regulations and green development of marine economy, and takes DDF-GML model to measure marine economic development. Furthermore, it builds a dynamic panel GMM model and conducts empirical test by using China's 11 coastal provincial regional panel data between 2007 and 2016. The study will provide useful reference for improving the existing government examination mechanism and achieving high-quality development of marine economy.

In this paper, the first part is the introduction, the second is literature review, the third is theoretical analysis and research hypothesis, the fourth is models, variables and data sources, the fifth is result and analysis, and the final part is conclusion and discussion.

Section snippets

Literature review

The green development of marine economy is basically a marine economic growth pattern with efficiency, harmony and sustainability as goals and with low energy consumption, low pollution, low emission, high efficiency and high efficiency as pursuits (Jun-guo and Xiang-Lin, n.d.). Scholars have also carried out qualitative and quantitative research based on this connotation. Some scholars say that green development of marine economy need focus on marine resource consumption and environmental

Government preference and green development of marine economy

Government preference means that behavior choice and institutional arrangement in government decision-making. In China's political context, inconsistencies in government preferences are mainly derived from official promotion and development concept of the central government (Xiao-xian and Tian-Dan, 2016). For a long time, the promotion incentive mechanism of local officials has been guided by central government's GDP performance. Affected by the “Promotion Championship”, the coastal governments

Method of measurement

Total factor productivity of marine economy is used herein as an alternative index for Green Development of Marine Economy(MEG). Total factor productivity of marine economy can represent the relevant elements of dual input and output of marine resources and environment, which reflects intensive development of marine resources and innovation of marine green technology, and highlights the intrinsic factors in green development and high-quality development of the marine economy. In the

Model construction

To investigate the respective impact of government preferences and environmental regulations on green development of marine economy, this paper refers to the research results of He et al. (Ai-Ping and Meng-Tian, 2019),set up the panel dynamic equation as follows: ${MEG}_{it} = α_{0} + δ_{1} {MEG}_{i, t - 1} + δ_{2} {MEG}_{i, t - 2} + β_{1} {GIP}_{it} + β_{2} GEP + β_{3} ER + β_{4} GIP * {ER}_{it} + β_{5} GEP * {ER}_{it} + \sum_{i}^{4} w_{i} X_{i} + ε_{it}$

In the above formula, MEG_it represents green development of marine economy, MEG_{i, t−1} is its first-order lagged variable, is its second-order lagged

Full sample test

To deeply examine the relationship between government preferences, environmental regulations and green development of marine economy (MEG), this paper adds lagged variable as a tool variable in the model, so the dynamic panel differential GMM(Gaussian Mixture Model)model is selected for test. Specifically, this paper takes first and second order lag value of green development of marine economy as instrument variables, so over-recognition is required, and all variable instruments in null

Conclusion

Based on theoretical analysis, a dynamic function model is constructed herein regarding the government's dual preferences, environmental regulation and interaction between the two. Using 2007–2016 panel data of 11 coastal provinces in China, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of government preference and environmental regulation on green development of the marine economy and further implements robustness tests using the system GMM model. The main conclusions of this paper are as

Author statement

Conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis,writing—original draft, YeFang; editing, Quan yongbo；data curation, editing，He yixiong；data curation, Lin xiaofang.All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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View full text

The impact of government preferences and environmental regulations on green development of China's marine economy

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Literature review

Government preference and green development of marine economy

Method of measurement

Model construction

Full sample test

Conclusion

Author statement

Declaration of Competing Interest

Ecol. Econ.

Ecol. Econ.

Regional Res.Develop.

J. Comp. Econ.

Local government competition, environmental regulation and green development efficiency

China Population·Res. Environ.

Nonlinear effects of industrial economic structure and economic growth on environmental pollution

China Popul.,Res. and Environ.

A global Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index

J. Prod. Anal.

Spatiotemporal evolution of total factor productivity in China's Marine economy and analysis of influencing factors

J. Ocean Univ. China (social sciences edition)

Comprehensive measurement and spatio-temporal evolution of green development level of Marine economy in China

Ocean Develop. Manag.

Anthony Heyes.Is environmental regulation bad for competition? A survey

J. Regul. Econ.

Research on the Total factor productivity and decomposition of Chinese coastal marine economy: based on DEA-Malmquist index

J. Coast. Res.

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