In the last decade, the public concern over environmental problems has led to the emergence of environmental regulations in firms’ information disclosure on environmental practice, especially in some developing countries such as China. Based on a panel dataset composed of the listed manufacturing firms in China during 2006–2016, this paper uses the difference-in-differences (DID) model and the propensity score matching (PSM) method to investigate whether the Environmental Information Disclosure Measure (for Trial Implementation; EIDMT) affects the firm value. The results show that EIDMT exerts a significant impact on the listed manufacturing firms’ value. In consideration of the firm’s ownership, EIDMT plays a more important role in the firm value of non-state-owned firms than state-owned firms. Furthermore, using a PSM–DID model for eastern, central, and western China, we find that EIDMT significantly affects the firm value in eastern and western China but has little impact on central China.

Driven by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the importance of sustainable urbanization has taken center stage. In this study, we investigate the impact of polycentric structures on CO₂ emissions using data from 279 Chinese cities and employing two-way fixed effects complemented by instrumental variables. Our findings indicate that polycentric structures effectively alleviate CO₂ emissions. We identify two key pathways through which polycentric structures contribute to CO₂ reduction: promoting green technology and curbing energy consumption. Additionally, we discover that these relationships are influenced by market integration levels and resource dependency. This research offers valuable insights into the future development of sustainable urban spatial structures, paving the way for more eco-friendly cities around the globe.