Based on the data of green credit (GC), environmental regulation (ER) and green technology innovation (GTI) in 30 provinces and cities of China from 2007 to 2016, this study investigated the relationship between green credit and green technology innovation development and analyzed the adjustment effect of ER on GC to promote GTI using Geoda and Matlab2016 software, so as to further guide and encourage GC. The results show that GTI in 30 provinces and municipalities in China has a significant spatial agglomeration effect. Single GC plays a certain role in promoting local technology innovation, but it fails to influences the surrounding areas. Environmental regulation has a certain regulatory effect on the relationship between green credit and green technology innovation in the province but also fails to influences the surrounding areas.
Tourism is making an increasingly considerable contribution to the sustainable development of world economy, but its development is susceptible to a series of disaster events. The impact of disaster events on tourists’ travel decisions is receiving ever-growing attention. In this study, disasters are classified into two categories: namely, natural disasters and man-made disasters. Among these disasters, earthquakes and terrorist attacks—as the most representative two types—are taken as research examples. By virtue of a difference-in-difference research method and online review data from TripAdvisor, multiple incidents that have occurred in different countries are systematically and comparatively analyzed for verifying the effects of catastrophic events with varying natures, frequencies, and intensities on tourism. The main findings are as follows: (1) both natural disasters and man-made disasters have a negative effect on the number of tourists and the tourist experience; (2) higher frequency and intensity of terrorist attacks may not correspond to tourism, and terrorist attacks exert a more influential impact on the safety image of tourist destinations; (3) compared with the scale and intensity of earthquakes, the frequency of earthquakes has a greater effect on tourism; (4) compared with terrorist attacks, earthquakes have a greater effect on the number of tourists.
Under the low-carbon background, with the aid of the Malmquist–Luenberger SBM (Slack-based Measure) model of unexpected output, the green total factor productivity (GTFP) of the logistics industry in Jiangsu Province, China, was measured and decomposed in this study based on the reality and experience of logistics industry development in 13 cities in three regions of Jiangsu Province in the years 2006–2018 by taking resource consumption into the input system and discharged pollutants into the output system. It is concluded that the environmental regulation (ER) has a significant positive effect on the growth of the GTFP of the logistics industry, and technological progress has become an important endogenous force that promotes the GTFP of the logistics industry in Jiangsu Province. On this basis, a dynamic GMM (Generalized method of moment) model and a Tobit model were constructed to further study the possible temporal and spatial effects of ER on the GTFP of the logistics industry. The research results reveal that the ER can exert both promoting and inhibitory effects on the GTFP of the logistics industry, and there is a temporal turning point for the effects. Besides, the effects notably differ spatially and temporally. Finally, some policies and advice for the green sustainable development of the logistics industry were proposed. For example, the government and enterprises should pay attention to the green and efficient development of the logistics industry and dynamically adjust the ER methods. They should consider the greening of both forward logistics links and reverse logistics system in the supply chain.
In order to explore how to achieve the coordinated development of the economy and environment, this paper uses the logistic model to verify that the city economy and the environment can achieve coordinated symbiosis. Next, an evaluation index system was used as empirical testing in order to measure the performance of the economy and environment. Further, the degree of coupling and coordination between them was obtained, and an econometric model was used to find the factors that affect the coordination and symbiosis between them. Finally, the following conclusions were obtained: (1) Resource-based cities of different development types do not show obvious differences in environmental carrying capacity and are basically at a medium carrying capacity level. (2) The level of the economic strength of resource-based cities is constantly improving, although with short-term fluctuations but with a general pace of improvement. (3) The synergy between economy and environment in resource-based cities is not high that the environment lags behind obviously. (4) The factors affecting the coordinated development of the environment and economy of resource-based cities are the annual average population and industrial wastewater discharge, which are contributing to the coordinated development of the economy and environment in resource-based cities. At the same time, the proportion of secondary industry in GDP, investment in fixed assets, and comprehensive utilization rate of general industrial solid waste inhibit the coordinated development of the economy and environment in resource-based cities. Based on the above conclusions, the paper puts forward relevant countermeasures and suggestions.
Flowing water resources and relatively fixed regional segmentation form a governance problem. The essence of horizontal collaborative governance is the establishment of coordination and cooperation processes between different independent and decentralized stakeholders in order to solve cross-regional public problems. As a result, the process of collaborative governance involves a jagged relationship of rights and responsibilities. This study attempts to explore how to achieve cross-regional intergovernmental joint prevention and treatment, and build a coordinated governance mechanism for a whole river basin. Based on data sources including local statistical yearbooks, open data of ecological environment departments and policy texts, this paper performs a comparative analysis of the current water quality status of various major water bodies in China and the relevant domestic ecological compensation systems. Based on this analysis, the current water quality situation is not optimistic. In order to strengthen the ecological and environmental management of river basins, more than 40 relevant systems and implementation schemes of ecological compensation for river basins have been introduced from the central government to the local government level since 2016, and 13 cross-provincial agreements (schemes) on horizontal ecological compensation for river basins have been signed. By analyzing various data and more than 53 systems (programs), it becomes apparent there are some problems in the governance of aquatic environments of river basins in China. These problems include a lack of laws and regulations on ecological compensation, imperfect coordination mechanisms, a single compensation mode and insufficient amounts of compensation. Based on this, this study proposes that China’s cross-regional river basin ecological compensation and collaborative governance mechanisms should start with differential governance; explore a variety of horizontal ecological compensation methods according to local conditions; improve cross-regional river basin collaborative mechanisms, laws and regulations; build a new path of horizontal independent collaboration; broaden the channels of financial compensation; and comprehensively improve the level of regional linkages in the governance of river basins.
An ecological index that is constructed based on remote sensing images can enable a rapid evaluation of the quality of the urban ecological environment and can provide a scientific basis for the construction of urban ecological civilization. Taking Meizhou City, in Guangdong in China, as a study area, based on the Landsat TM/OLI and MODIS remote sensing data, this paper extracts the total primary productivity (GPP), land surface temperature (LST), humidity component (Wetness), and bare soil index (SI), which represent the remote sensing ecological index (RSEI) evaluation indicators. The greenness, heat, humidity, and dryness in the indicators are used to characterize the quality of the regional ecological environment and its change characteristics. The results show that: (1) the high-quality areas of ecological environment in the study area are increasing, and the proportion of high-grade RSEI areas has increased from 61.7% to 66.2%. (2) About 26.3% of the area in the study area has an optimized ecological environment quality. (3) The correlation between POI and each index is significant, among which GPP and LST have a high correlation with RSEI, while POI and RSEI have a moderately negative correlation. (4) MODIS data are suitable for regional ecological environmental quality assessments. In the future, research on RSEI data sources and processing efficiency and the spatiotemporal changes of ecological quality and environmental factors can be strengthened, and the sustainable development of ecological protection and urban construction planning can be explored.