Innovation serves as the first impetus for high-quality development. The role of government in promoting high-quality innovation development has become a chief driving force. Therefore, based on role theory, this paper will discuss the effect of different government roles on high-quality innovation development and regional alienation, providing policy recommendations for China. In this paper, firstly, a super-efficiency DEA model is introduced to measure the high-quality innovation development level among 30 provinces and municipalities in mainland China from 2010 to 2017. Secondly, a Tobit model is used to analyze the impact of different government roles on high-quality innovation development. The following conclusions are drawn through a super-efficiency DEA model: (1) From the holistic perspective, the high-quality innovation development in mainland China shows a fluctuating growth trend, but its level still needs improvement. (2) From the regional perspective, there is a patchwork pattern of ‘the eastern region ranks highest, followed by the western region and the middle region that stays at the lowest’. In addition, the three regions’ average of total factor productivity of high-quality innovation development has shown a smooth upward trend over the years. Then, the results of Tobit regression analysis are as follows: (1) Apart from the role in supporting talent, roles in constructing innovation platforms, cultivating the innovation environment, and coordinating social resources all pass the significance test. (2) Demands of different government roles vary significantly in different regions from the regional perspective. For the betterment of an innovation society, this paper puts forward suggestions according to different regional development statuses, such as shifting our focus from quantity to quality, strengthening cooperation among provinces and municipalities, and formulating appropriate governance role strategies.

The performance of the regional water environment integrated governance is affected by many factors. This study took place in Henan Province, China, as the research area, and constructed an index system through the comprehensive consideration of three target layers based on the Ecological-Social-Economic (ESE) framework. Due to advantages such as strong objectivity and operability, the improved entropy-weight technique for the order of preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) model can greatly overcome subjective human interference and render the evaluation results more reliable. Therefore, it was introduced to evaluate the water environment integrated governance in Henan from 2007 to 2016. By applying the obstacle degree model, the obstacle factors were then diagnosed. The results of this study show that the overall performance of the integrated governance was generally improved in Henan from 2007 to 2016. Performance levels of the three target layers exhibited different trends, of which the social and economic benefits presented a linear increase year by year, but the ecological benefits presented a fluctuating downward trend. The obstacle on the Henan water environment integrated governance mainly comes from the ecological and economic benefits index. Therefore, a series of countermeasures have been proposed as a means of improving the governance performance in Henan.

The high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin is still facing the issue of imbalance and inadequacy, and it urgently requires the backing and assistance of a well-coordinated and efficient comprehensive transportation network system. Based on this purpose, this study uses a composite system synergy degree model incorporating “mode dimension + regional dimension” to analyze the evolution of this network. The results indicate the following: (1) Railway and air transportation surpass highway transportation in growth and synergy, though overall system synergy is still low. (2) Downstream areas are gradually taking the lead, and the orderliness of each subsystem is gradually becoming consistent. The complexity and variability of the composite system’s synergy are high, with an overall low level of synergy. Overall, despite improvements in service capacity and quality, better integration of different transport modes and enhanced cross-regional cooperation are needed. This study reveals and analyzes in depth the complexity of the comprehensive transportation network system in the Yellow River Basin and its spatiotemporal characteristics of synergistic evolution. We propose suggestions for high-quality development at national, regional, and industry levels, fostering the continuous improvement of the system structure, which aids in overcoming the tangible obstacles faced by the high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin.

Sustainable development is a crucial way not only of promoting the economic success of family businesses but also of ensuring their long-term stability and prosperity. As a central element of relational governance, trust plays a vital role in efforts to align the interests of principals with those of agents, and this factor has received significant attention in the context of family businesses. Stewardship theory further posits that granting agents sufficient authority and trust can effectively encourage them to engage in stewardship behaviours that are more in line with the overall interests of the organization, thus providing a new theoretical perspective on agency problems as well as a practical approach that can be used to address these issues. In traditional Chinese culture, family businesses benefit from deep-seated family values and unique relational networks, which confer on them a distinctive governance logic and a system rooted in foundational trust. On the basis of survey data collected from 281 nonfamily chief executive officers (CEOs) in China, this study empirically examines the impact of trust between controlling families (CFs) and non-family CEO (NFEs) on the sustainable development performance of family businesses. The findings of this research are as follows: (1) Trust between CFs and NFEs is developed through the exchange of economic benefits, the integration of social emotions, and the establishment of institutional structures, thus leading to three forms of trust: calculative trust, relational trust, and institutional trust. Calculative trust can inhibit the sustainable development performance of family businesses, whereas relational trust and institutional trust can enhance such performance. (2) Calculative trust reduces stewardship behaviour on the part of NFEs, thereby weakening the sustainable development performance of family businesses. Conversely, both relational trust and institutional trust can promote stewardship behaviour on the part of NFEs, thereby strengthening the firm’s sustainable development performance. This study addresses gaps in previous research on this topic and offers valuable insights that businesses can use to take advantage of trust to improve their sustainable development outcomes.

In the context of intensifying environmental regulation and sustainability pressures, firms increasingly face the challenge of sustaining green innovation under uncertainty. Green innovation resilience, which is defined as a firm’s capacity to maintain green innovation momentum and adaptively evolve technological capabilities amidst uncertainty, represents a critical organizational competence. Moving beyond static output measures, this resilience captures the intertemporal stability of firms’ green patenting activities during turbulent periods. From a systems perspective, executive compensation arrangements represent an important internal incentive mechanism that interacts with managerial characteristics and external policy environments. This study investigates how executive compensation stickiness—defined as asymmetric pay adjustment in response to firm performance—affects green innovation resilience. Using panel data from Chinese A-share-listed firms, we find that executive compensation stickiness significantly promotes green innovation resilience at the 5% level, suggesting that downward pay rigidity mitigates managerial risk aversion and supports tolerance for short-term setbacks in long-horizon green innovation. Furthermore, this positive relationship is further strengthened when executives possess environmental backgrounds (at the 5% level) and when firms receive government green innovation subsidies (at the 10% level), highlighting the interactive role of individual-level attributes and institutional policy support. Overall, the findings demonstrate how incentive asymmetry functions as a systemic property shaping firms’ adaptive responses and contribute to a broader understanding of green innovation resilience in complex socio-technical systems.