China’s high-speed economic growth and severe environmental problems have resulted in a poor Environmental Performance Index and have affected China’s sustainable development and ecological welfare improvement. Therefore, exploring whether there is a certain relationship between the two and their influencing factors is an important way and a breakthrough to solve the problems regarding green economic progress and ecological welfare enhancement. To this end, by using the undesirable slack-based measure (SBM) model, this paper measures the ecological welfare performance and the green economic efficiency of 11 cities in Zhejiang Province, China, from 2000 to 2019. Through the methods of spatiotemporal evolution, coefficient of variation, coupling coordination degree, and the Tobit model, we found that: (1) The development trend of urban green economic efficiency and ecological welfare performance were both in a “U” shape that first fell and then rose; (2) The coupling coordination degree between green economic efficiency and ecological welfare performance showed a wave-like upward trend as a whole and most cities have entered a more advanced coupling coordination stage during the study period. The coefficient of variation revealed a downward trend; (3) The urbanization level, industrial structure, and government investment can promote the regional coordinated development, while the industrialization degree and the opening level had a negative impact on it; (4) The “Two Mountains” theory was beneficial to the improvement of regional urban green economic efficiency and ecological welfare performance and their coordinated development both in theory and practice. Finally, according to the findings, we offer relevant suggestions on making good use of the country’s preferential policies and informatization means from the perspective of the regional coordinated development.

Green innovation has become the mainstream of the era, and new urbanization is an inevitable choice in China’s urbanization development. Focusing on the topics of green innovation and new urbanization, much work has been done to analyze their influencing factors separately, while the relationship between the two remains to be explored. This paper selects the representative indicators to study the new urbanization and green innovation of the Yangtze River Delta city group from the perspective of the whole and individual cities, in terms of spatiotemporal evolution traits, by using the SBM, entropy method, coupling model, spatial econometric and geographical detector. The results reveal the following: (1) there is a synergistic effect between green innovation and new urbanization development, and the role has been increasing; (2) green innovation and new urbanization present positive spatial autocorrelation and regional agglomeration; (3) in the detection of driving factors, economic development > social conditions > natural resources; most groups (40/66) of factor interactions present nonlinear enhancement, and the digital economy factor accounts for the largest proportion. Finally, according to the findings, we offer a suggestion and a conclusion.

To realize the development goals of environmental governance and low-carbon emission reduction, the effect of local environmental protection fiscal expenditure on carbon emissions needs to be assessed. This paper utilizes the panel data of 30 provinces in mainland China except Tibet from 2007 to 2019 and empirically examines the baseline effect, the mechanism, the nonlinear effect, and the spatial spillover effect of the local environmental protection fiscal expenditures affecting the intensity of carbon emissions by using the fixed-effects model, the FGLS model, the threshold panel model, and the spatial Durbin model. The results indicate that local environmental fiscal expenditure significantly lowers carbon emissions, generating a carbon reduction effect, and this finding remains robust under various checks; the mechanism analysis reveals that local environmental fiscal expenditure facilitates industrial structure upgrading, thereby indirectly producing a carbon reduction effect; the threshold analysis shows that the carbon reduction effect of local environmental fiscal expenditure exhibits a diminishing marginal tendency, and as the industrial structure continues to upgrade, the carbon reduction effect of local environmental fiscal expenditure displays an “Inverted U-shaped” pattern; the spatial analysis demonstrates that local environmental fiscal expenditure and carbon emissions have positive spatial autocorrelation, and local environmental fiscal expenditure in one region will induce a decline in carbon emissions in neighboring regions through spatial spillover effect. Based on the above results, this paper puts forward policy suggestions in terms of constructing a reasonable growth mechanism for local environmental protection financial expenditures, creating an ecological environment for low-carbon transformation, and constructing a reasonable regional coordination mechanism for carbon emission reduction.

In recent years, in order to improve the quality of living, China has carried out a series of urban renewal projects, such as adding elevators to old communities. Taking Hangzhou as an example, this paper studies the decision to install elevators in old residential buildings. This study used cold spots and hot spots, local autocorrelation and fishnetting analysis to show the spatial and temporal patterns of lift retrofitting in old communities. Finally, the spatial lag model is used to test whether there is a spatial spillover effect in the behavior of residents installing elevators. The research shows that: (1) Hot spots areas for retrofitting lifts are clustered in the central urban areas of Hangzhou, such as the intersection of Shangcheng District, Xiacheng District, Jianggan District, Gongshu District and Xihu District (scenic area); (2) The trend of retrofitting areas spreading from the center to the periphery; (3) In different communities, the number of elevators added in neighboring communities has a positive effect on the decision of adding elevators in other local communities. Therefore, the neighborhood effect cannot be ignored in the topic of community renovation, in which residents spontaneously participate.

Guarantee the initial information of the agri-food supply chain (AFSC) authenticity based on the blockchain is a complex problem. This paper develops an evolutionary game model of AFSC participants based on the blockchain and discusses the impacts of the key parameters on the dynamic evolution process of participants. To verify the theoretical results, simulation experiments and sensitivity analysis were conducted through Matlab 2022b. The study results show that: (1) Guaranteeing the initial information authenticity could become the common belief of all AFSC participants, with the scientific design of parameters; (2) Higher reward and synergistic effect, lower information cost and risk contribute to improving the probability of initial true information sharing. (3) when the default penalty is too severe, the enterprise will evolve into not sharing the initial true information. Finally, this study could provide some suggestions and countermeasures for the leading enterprise in the agricultural supply chain and local governments to guarantee initial information authenticity in China. That is the way to realize the sustainability of AFSC in the long run.