In the analysis, we integrated stakeholder and agency theories to explore the connection between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable financial development by considering the moderating effect of ownership structure. After empirical analysis, we found the following conclusions. First, the short-term and long-term economic performance is positively affected by CSR, which leads to sustainable financial development. Second, ownership circulation has a positive relationship with economic performance in the short run, which short-term profit increases as ownership circulation strengthens. Third, the effect of CSR on short-term economic performance is moderated by ownership structure. Excessive concentrated ownership may lead to decisions that do not satisfy all key stakeholders and may reduce the positive effect of CSR on economic performance. Finally, we suggest that Chinese energy companies should pay more attention to improving corporate social responsibility to maintain good economic performance and develop sustainable competitive advantage. Meanwhile, companies should optimize ownership concentration to avoid weakening the positive effects of social responsibility on short-term economic performance.

Environmental protection firms need to improve their ability to access financing while maintaining good economic performance under mounting environmental pressures. After the integration of trade-off and stakeholder theories, we have constructed a number of mathematical models to investigate the relationship among financing decisions, environmental performance (EP), and economic performance. Unbalanced panel data from environmental protection companies listed on Chinese stock exchanges from 2007 to 2016 were collected and analyzed. Our results have confirmed that debt financing has a significant impact on short- and long-term economic performance. Firms prefer long-term debt over short-term debt to improve their financial sustainability. Internal financing is positively related to performance because the cost of financing is lower. Environmental performance can cause extra financial burden in the short run, but will improve stakeholder relations and profitability in the long run. Our study suggests that environmental performance affects the relationship between financing decisions and economic performance. When EP initiatives are high, debt financing has a greater negative influence on short-term performance, and the effect on long-term performance is mitigated. High EP also reduces the impact of internal financing on performance.

With economic growth and rising incomes, increasing consumption of fossil energy is leading to environmental pollution and climate change, which requires increased innovative inputs to promote the efficiency of renewable energy use. Considering the important impact of innovation input and climate change on renewable energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and green economic growth, this study uses simultaneous equation and sys-GMM model to explore the dynamic nexus of innovation input, climate change, and energy-environment-growth in OECD and non-OECD countries, with panel data covering 2000 to 2019. The empirical results show that renewable energy consumption in non-OECD countries significantly promoted green economic growth, while OECD countries did the opposite. Moreover, renewable energy consumption significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions caused by climate change, especially for OECD countries. When the level of economic growth exceeds a certain inflection point, greenhouse gas emissions begin to turn from positive to negative, which further verifies the EKC hypothesis. In addition, this study found that innovation input has significantly increased renewable energy consumption, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and promoted green economic growth in OECD countries. Finally, this study also found that the impact of innovation input in OECD and non-OECD countries on the energy-environment-growth nexus is greater in the short term and more significant in the medium and long term, while the impact of climate change on the energy-environment nexus in OECD and non-OECD countries is more significant in the medium and long term.

In today’s socio-economic context where environmental protection and sustainable development are equally important, how renewable energy enterprises can achieve sustainable development has become a topic of academic interest in recent years. This paper investigates the link between sustainable growth (SG) of renewable energy firms, resource endowment (RE), and environmental regulatory (ERs) issues through a fixed-effects model and a GMM model. Through empirical analysis, it was found that economical environmental regulations have the greatest positive impact on sustainable growth, followed by legal environmental regulations and supervised environmental regulations. Resource endowment is positively related to sustainable growth for non-state-owned renewable energy enterprises, but the negative impact on sustainable growth reflects the effect the of “resource curse”. In addition, resource endowment has a negative moderating effect on environmental regulations and sustainable growth. Thus, the most significant effect is on the relationship between economical environmental regulations and sustainable growth, followed by legal environmental regulations and supervised environmental regulations. Therefore, the flexible and concurrent application of multiple environmental policies is an important way to ensure effective regulations and promote sustainable business growth.

This paper employs the cluster analysis to classify the energy sector into three types, namely, technology-, capital-, and labor-intensive energy company. It then studies the interactive endogenous relationship between R&D investment and financially sustainable performance and the moderate effect of the executive incentive through three-stage least squares (3SLS) of the simultaneous equations model (SEM). The results show that for the technology-intensive energy company, an increase in the previous period in R&D investment improves the current period of financially sustainable performance, and the improvement in the current period in financially sustainable performance results in a decline in financially sustainable performance in the next period, which demands an increase in R&D investment subsequently. In contrast, for the capital-intensive energy company, R&D investment can significantly improve the financially sustainable performance in the current period, and the improvement in financially sustainable performance can also promote the intensity of next period R&D investment. For the labor-intensive energy company, R&D investment depends on the company’s previous period returns, while R&D investment has no significant impact on the financially sustainable performance in the current period and the next period. In addition, the salary incentives for executives have a significant positive moderate effect on the relationship between R&D investment and financially sustainable performance, especially in the technology-intensive energy company, while equity incentives for executives do not show any significant effect in the sample for different types of companies.

Improving tourism’s ecological efficiency and facilitating harmony between tourism development and the ecological environment are profitable and conducive to sustainable development. In this study, we investigated the relationship between tourism’s eco-efficiency for sustainable tourism development and environmental protection by incorporating unexpected outputs to calculate tourism’s eco-efficiencies, analyzing the three-dimensional spatial variation and, finally, considering the effects of nine comprehensive factors on the extent of the spatial variation in tourism efficiencies: economic development, openness, social consumption, the digital economy, transportation infrastructure, government intervention, technological innovation, energy consumption, and passenger turnover. First, an unexpected slack-based measure model was applied to calculate the tourism ecological efficiencies of 21 cities in Guangdong Province from 2009 to 2021. Second, the natural breakpoint method and trend surface analysis were used to identify the spatiotemporal differences in and spatial trends of these tourism ecological efficiencies. Finally, the geographical detector model was utilized to analyze the elements affecting the spatial and temporal differences in the tourism ecological efficiencies. Overall, the tourism ecological efficiencies of 21 cities in Guangdong Province are at a high level, showing obvious spatiotemporal changes. Compared with 2009 and 2021, the overall tourism ecological efficiencies of 21 cities in Guangdong Province shifted from a trend of high in the north, low in the south, low in the west, and high in the east to a trend of low in the north, low in the south, high in the west, and low in the east. The distribution in the north–south and east–west directions is in a “U” shape, and the spatial differences in the north–south and east–west directions are relatively significant. We suggest considering the roles of factors such as the development of the digital economy, the level of government intervention, the level of technical innovation, the driving force of transportation, the standard of the transportation infrastructure, and the standard of social consumption. This study provides a constructive approach to elevating the tourism ecological efficiencies of 21 cities in Guangdong Province with regards to the nine driving factors.