The sharing economy is an emerging economic form with the potential to promote sustainable development; it is highly malleable but tends to not be environmentally friendly or necessarily lead to saving resources. Therefore, to give it the inherent logic of sustainable development and realize its great potential, the sharing economy must be made to meet the necessary conditions and be appropriately regulated in the current window of opportunity. This paper proposes that the potential factors of the sharing economy that can promote sustainable development are mainly improving resource utilization efficiency, market impetus and plasticity and transforming consumption patterns and concepts, while the main limiting factors are the excessive demand that is likely to result from to the descending consumption threshold, lack of maintenance motivation due to the sharing of property rights, and uncertainty in the proportions of increased welfare levels and resource consumption. Then, the paper explores the necessary conditions to promote sustainable development in the sharing economy, namely, the required characteristics of shared products and the need to place constraints on consumers. Next, it discusses how to incorporate these conditional factors into the regulatory framework for the future development of the sharing economy and proposes overall principles and ideas for the governance and regulation of producers, consumers, and platform operators in the operation of and participation in the sharing economy. Finally, the paper emphasizes that the line of regulatory thinking should change because the sharing economy differs from traditional economic forms, and it also emphasizes the importance of exploring conditions and explores the related research prospects for studying regulation with environmental sustainability as the regulatory objective.

Governments around the world are actively exploring strategies to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. In addition to technological progress, promoting a transformation of residents’ behaviors to a low carbon mode is also a solution. Many people are concerned about how to reduce carbon emissions while ensuring human well-being. Starting from the comparative analysis of two main theories of human well-being, this paper sorted out existing well-being measurement methods from the perspectives of “top-down” and “bottom-up” and further sorted out research on the relationship between human well-being and energy carbon emissions. While “top-down” research is conducive to the layout of macro policies, “bottom-up” research can better help to promote the transformation of society to a low carbon life by estimating the energy consumption and carbon emissions contained in human needs. Current research discusses human well-being, human needs, energy use and carbon emissions, respectively, but they are not systematically integrated. Furthermore, this paper proposes a framework combining these aspects to analyze the relationship between human well-being and carbon emissions. In addition, this paper suggests future research directions.

Ecosystem service flow (ESF) provides a new perspective for understanding the spatial transfer of ecosystem services across urban administrative boundaries, which is of significant importance for optimizing the regional ecological resource allocation. Taking the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) urban agglomeration as a case study, this study analyzed the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of the ecosystem service value (ESV) and ESF in 41 cities of the region from 2000 to 2020, combining the modified equivalence factor method and the breaking-point model. It also revealed the regional division and evolution patterns of per area ESV and per capita GDP based on ESF in the YRD. The results showed that from 2000 to 2020, the overall ESV in the YRD exhibited a declining trend, with a spatial distribution showing higher values in the south and lower values in the north. Forest contributed over 50% of total ESV, while the value of hydrological regulation services consistently held the largest proportion and contributed the most significant growth. The overall decline in ESF was only 0.6%, with more than 70% of the flow occurring within provincial boundaries. Hangzhou, Taizhou (Zhejiang), and Chuzhou had the highest net outflows, while Jinhua, Changzhou, and Taizhou (Jiangsu) led in net inflows. The number of service-providing areas (SPAs) and service beneficiary areas (SBAs) remained relatively stable. Furthermore, a four-quadrant framework based on ESF, per area ESV, and per capita GDP was constructed, showing that the cities in the YRD mainly shifted between Quadrants I, II, and IV, with several cities transitioning from Quadrant III to II. Based on these findings, optimized management strategies for the coordinated economic-ecological development of the YRD are proposed.

Based on the data of 30 provinces in China from 1995 to 2019, this paper combines dynamic spatial Durbin model, and intermediary effect model to explore the spatial influence mechanism between economic agglomeration, technological level, and carbon emission intensity. Firstly, there is a significant inverted N-curve relationship between economic agglomeration and carbon emission intensity. Secondly, economic agglomeration has a direct and indirect dual effect on carbon intensity, in which technology level as an intermediary variable indirectly affects carbon emission intensity. Finally, in the time dimension, the concentration of carbon intensity of 30 provinces has increased. In the spatial dimension, economic agglomeration and technological progress can effectively constrain the level of carbon intensity, but to a certain extent it will increase the level of carbon intensity in surrounding areas.

The structuring of effective market-based environmental rights instruments can help to achieve energy efficiency and emission reduction goals while minimizing economic costs. As part of the global drive for sustainable development, pollution rights, carbon emission permits, and white certificates have become widely used as environmental rights trading schemes in many countries. However, interactions between environmental rights can create challenges. For instance, China has established a national carbon market, which it aims to connect with the energy consumption permit trading market. The effectiveness of separate and joint markets in achieving win-win outcomes is an area that requires further research. To address this question, we employed a mixed-integer linear programming model to simulate the potential incremental outputs and energy savings of 16 high-energy-consuming and high-emission industries in China from 2010 to 2019. Our findings indicate that the joint energy consumption permits and the carbon emission permits market yield the greatest economic benefits, but they lack a distinct advantage compared to the separate carbon market. Additionally, industries face less pressure to ensure energy savings in the joint market. The energy saving ratio of the joint market is 0.1% lower than that of the separate carbon market. We also found that the construction of a joint market will incur additional costs for firms and governments. Based on our benefit and cost analysis, we propose that governance subjects of pilot cities prioritize the establishment of the carbon market and not the rapid expansion of the pilot-level scope of energy consumption permits.