The health status of ecosystems is an important prerequisite for ensuring regional ecological security. Exploring the spatiotemporal patterns, driving mechanisms, and zoning regulation pathways of ecosystem health is of great significance for achieving co-ordinated and sustainable regional ecosystems. This study uses China as a case area and applies the InVEST model to measure integrated ecosystem services and incorporates it into an evaluation framework for ecosystem health based on the “Vigor-Organization-Resilience-Ecosystem Services” (VORS) model. It reveals the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of ecosystem health in China from 2000 to 2020 and employs the geodetector and spatiotemporal geographically weighted regression model to analyze the main influencing factors and spatial differentiation characteristics, thereby exploring ecological management zoning and optimization pathways. The study results show that (1) during the study period, the overall ecosystem health level in China showed a declining trend, dropping from 0.397 in 2000 to 0.377 in 2020. (2) Overall, China’s ecosystem health exhibits strong spatial positive correlation and spatial clustering characteristics, with a basic pattern of lower values in the northwest and higher values in the southeast. (3) Vegetation coverage, population density, density of road network, and per capita GDP are the main influencing factors of ecosystem health in China. (4) China is divided into five types of Ecological Management Zones: Ecological Conservation Zone, Ecological Enhancement Zone, Ecological Buffer Zone, Ecological Remediation Zone, and Ecological Reshaping Zone, with differentiated strategies proposed for optimizing ecosystem health in each zone.

In the context of increasingly prominent rural environmental problems, the third-party pollution governance model has become an important initiative for the comprehensive governance of rural environmental problems in China. However, the current third-party governance initiatives continue to suffer from governance failures caused by unclear responsibility sharing and opportunistic behavior. To analyze the reasons behind the behavioral choices of the various stakeholders involved in rural environmental third-party governance and to provide policy insights for formulating more reasonable rural environmental third-party governance solutions, a game model was constructed between local governments and third-party governance institutions. Specifically, the model examined the different evolutionary game strategies that appear between local governments and third-party governance institutions in different institutional design contexts when responsibility disputes arise in third-party governance. These disputes involve the re-governing of pollution control responsibility, which can be borne either by the local governments or the party causing the damage. The results shown are as follows: It is crucial to define the boundaries of re-governance responsibility in the third-party governance of rural environmental pollution. When local governments bear the primary responsibility for governance, regardless of whether they provide regulatory oversight, third-party governance institutions tend to adopt a passive approach. In such cases, the third-party governance market fails to effectively fulfill its role in governance. By reconstructing the third-party governance market model and dividing the main responsibility for pollution governance among the damaging parties, it is possible to achieve active governance by third-party governance institutions without the need for regulation by local governments.

Price competition and quality competition are the main ways to increase and maintain international competitiveness in the world. However, competitive strategies can vary significantly from product to product. With the utility function and trade gravity model as the research framework in this paper, we use the top 10 countries in terms of the trade volume of forest products from 2012 to 2021 as samples to systematically explore the differential impacts of price and quality on the international competitiveness of forest products. The results of the panel data model that show the regression coefficient of forest product price in terms of international competitiveness are significantly negative, while the regression coefficient of forest product quality is significantly positive, but the absolute value of the regression coefficient of product quality is higher than that of forest product price. Thus, the price and quality of forest products are key factors affecting international competitiveness in general, with the quality of forest products having a higher impact on international competitiveness than the price. However, a further analysis of different forest product categories and countries revealed significant differences in the significance and magnitude of price and quality impacts on international competitiveness. The quality of forest products contributes more to international competitiveness in Brazil, Canada, Germany, Russia, Sweden and the United States. Conversely, the price of forest products in China, Finland, Italy and Poland contributes more to international competitiveness. Therefore, an objective choice of price, quality or a quality:price ratio strategy, taking into account the industry and characteristics of forest products in each country, can contribute to the sustainable improvement of the international competitiveness of forest products.

Carbon emissions trading pilots are an essential environmental regulation tool for incentivizing companies to reduce carbon emissions and a critical initiative for achieving “dual carbon” targets. This study, based on 2366 observations of 169 high-carbon listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2009 to 2022, uses double machine learning analysis to examine the impact and mechanisms of pilot policy on the low-carbon competitiveness of high-carbon industry-listed companies. The empirical results show that, first, pilot policy significantly enhances the low-carbon competitiveness of high-carbon industry-listed companies, and this conclusion holds after considering a series of robustness checks. Second, mechanism analysis indicates that alleviating green financing constraints and enhancing total factor productivity are pathways through which pilot policy influences low-carbon competitiveness. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the policy effects are stronger for state-owned enterprises, small- and medium-sized enterprises, and companies in eastern regions. Further analysis reveals that pilot policy enhances low-carbon competitiveness and increase enterprise value. Based on the study’s conclusions, the government should ensure the incentivizing effect of pilot policy, promote expansion of the carbon emissions trading market, assist enterprises in overcoming green financing constraints, improve total factor productivity, and formulate tailored policies according to the development levels and resource endowments of regions and companies.