This study examines the effects of sustainable marketing assets, such as brand equity and marketing innovation, on market performance in the presence of sustainable competitive advantage as a mediator in the hospitality industry. Data were collected from hotel/restaurant customers (N = 360) on a Likert scale from 1= strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree and analysis was conducted using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. The objective of this study is to understand the relationship among brand equity, marketing innovation, sustainable competitive advantage, and market performance in the hotel/restaurant industry. The results show that sustainable marketing assets have positive and significant effects on market performance. This study also demonstrates that sustainable competitive advantage fully mediates the relationship between brand equity and market performance while partially mediating the relationship between marketing innovation and market performance. The findings of this research can contribute to formulating effective marketing strategies for attracting customers, emphasizing sustainable issues in the hospitality sector, such as hotels/restaurants. This research adds practical value to the literature on brand equity, marketing innovation, sustainable competitive advantage, and market performance in the service industry.

“Porter Hypothesis” believes that environmental protection regulations contribute to cleaner production and green technology innovation which benefit to enhance manufacturing firm performance . We take China’s new “Environmental Protection Regulations (2015), as a quasi-natural experiment, using A-share listed companies in Shenzhen and Shanghai in 2012–2017 as a research sample. Using the propensity score matching and double difference (PSM-DID) method, we empirically test the impact of environmental regulations on the financial performance of these companies. The results show that the new Environmental Protection Law has significantly improved corporate profits of large enterprises large firms. Different from the innovation mechanism emphasized in the literature based on the Porter hypothesis, we find that “Compliance cost heterogeneity” caused by the scale difference of firms better explains the impact of environmental regulations on the profit margin of listed manufacturing firms. Overall, this study contributes novel insights about the economic consequences of environmental regulation and establishes an initial foundation for investigating environmental regulation from the perspective of compliance cost heterogeneity.

Rapid urbanization has increased haze pollution, affecting the health of elderly people. This study uses low-carbon city (LCC) data and examines the effects of LCCs on improving the health of elderly residents. Our main purpose is to explore the following question: Can the new urbanization model presented by the LCC alleviate haze pollution and enhance the health of middle-aged and elderly people? This study uses data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and the 2012 LCC pilot to explore whether the LCC can alleviate haze pollution and improve elderly people’s health. The study found that the building of LCCs can reduce blood pressure, improve vital capacity, decrease obesity, and improve memory levels, including short-term and long-term memory. The building of LCCs also reduces the probability of being exposed to haze pollution by increasing the city’s green total factor productivity and the use of green technologies. The study concludes that elderly people received health dividends as a result of the enhancement of living conditions, transportation, and medical support in the LCCs.