Identifying the path and effectiveness of governance tools is the key to environmental NIMBY (not in my back yard) event governance. However, there are limited studies on the path between effective governance tools and environmental NIMBY events. Based on the theory of emotional catharsis, we establish an analytical framework for the evolution of the environmental NIMBY event and analyze the effectiveness of the current main governance tools. The results show that government solicitation of opinions (GSOs) governance tools are insignificant in the governance of resistance behavior. The effects of public demand communication (PDC) governance tools and compensation negotiation (CN)governance tools on resistance behaviors all show a significant negative correlation; negative emotions play an intermediary role in their governance tools. The overall performance is that the greater the compensation, the lower the willingness to engage in resistance behavior. The establishment of a reasonable compensation system can effectively reduce the public’s willingness to engage in resistance behavior. Through the evaluation of the effectiveness of governance tools in environmental NIMBY events, this study helps to improve governance tools and has important practical significance for solving the environmental NIMBY dilemma.

The urban carbon administration discussion is becoming dominant in the carbon emission reduction landscape. China, the world’s paramount carbon emitter, has instituted a series of policies geared towards carbon emissions reduction. The co-dependent nature of these policies becomes paramount in outlining accurate and comprehensive evaluation results. This research scrutinizes the effect of various policy mixtures on curbing urban carbon emissions, utilizing the Tapio decoupling elasticity coefficient and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) techniques. The consistencies surpass the widely accepted theoretical threshold of 0.8, and each configuration can explain 14.3% to 19.8% of the sample. The findings reveal that industrial and energy policies drive the decoupling of urban carbon emissions in three of four configurations. Management-based policies merely play an auxiliary role, while social and economic policies have yet to exhibit significant implications. The outcomes of this research offer a framework for augmenting the carbon emission reduction policy system and fostering the advancement of carbon reduction initiatives.

Renewable energy’s integral role in addressing the global climate crisis underscores the importance of crafting coordinated policies to bolster its growth. Shandong Province, as China’s largest carbon emitter, presents an intriguing case study. Leveraging policy text analysis and the coupling coordination model, this research investigates the interplay among the diverse policy instruments within Shandong Province’s renewable energy policies. The findings reveal a harmonious and varied array of policy instruments. Yet, notable disparities emerge when examining secondary policy instruments across different types of renewable energy. Consequently, this paper offers strategic recommendations to improve the coupling coordination and utilization of policy instruments across various types of renewable energy. The ultimate aim is to strengthen policy synergies, overhaul the energy structure, and make a meaningful contribution to global climate change mitigation efforts.

Eco-city (EC) development depends not only on environmental governance but also on the allocation of financial and technological resources. Digital inclusive finance (DIF) may be associated with green development through improved financial accessibility and resource allocation; however, its predictive relationship with coordinated EC development remains insufficiently characterized. Using panel data for 284 prefecture-level or higher-level cities in China from 2011 to 2023, this study constructs an EC coordinated evaluation system across four dimensions: low-carbon transition, environmental governance, ecological enhancement, and economic and social well-being. It then employs an XGBoost-SHAP framework to examine the relative predictive importance and nonlinear patterns associated with DIF and to compare these patterns across the four dimensions of eco-city development. The results show that coordinated EC development generally improved over the study period, while substantial spatial differences persisted and significant positive spatial autocorrelation was observed. Among the included features, DIF exhibits the largest mean absolute SHAP value in predicting coordinated EC development. Its SHAP contribution shifts nonlinearly from negative to positive relative to the prediction baseline, with a descriptive model-based zero-crossing around a DIF index value of 200 rather than a statistically estimated threshold. The predictive importance and nonlinear contribution patterns of DIF also vary substantially across dimensions, with greater relative importance for environmental governance and ecological enhancement than for low-carbon transition and economic and social well-being. These findings remain broadly robust under city-grouped holdout validation, an alternative nonlinear model, a two-way fixed-effects benchmark, and alternative subsystem-weighting schemes. The study provides a multidimensional perspective for understanding the predictive association between digital inclusive finance and coordinated eco-city development.