Environmental regulation, Foreign investment behavior, and carbon emissions for 30 provinces in China

By Wei Zhang, Guoxiang Li, K. Uddin, Shucen Guo. Journal of Cleaner Production, 2020

302 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Using the panel data of 30 provincial-level administrative regions in China (excluding Tibet, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan), a threshold regression model was used to empirically analyze the impact of environmental regulation and foreign investment behavior on the amount and intensity of carbon emissions. The results showed that: First, there is a significant inverted “U”-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and carbon emissions. With improved environmental regulation, the positive effects of environmental regulation in reducing the amount and intensity of carbon emissions are more obvious. Next, foreign investment behavior under environmental regulations can reduce the amount and intensity of carbon emissions. Finally, In terms of regional heterogeneity, foreign investment behavior in the eastern and central regions can curb carbon emissions, the opposite effect is seen in the western region. With improved environmental regulations for relatively high–emission intensity regions, foreign direct investment (FDI) in low–emission intensity regions can significantly reduce carbon emissions. It is necessary to formulate differentiated environmental regulation based on regional development. Foreign investment behavior should be standardized to improve the quality of FDI and avoid making China a “pollution paradise” for FDI.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ffb9de22b6abc4744aab7f494dee2bba5662f038

How researchers see this paper

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In Economics and Econometrics

1. Sónia Cristina Almeida Neves
2. A. Marques
3. Margarida Patrício

In Environmental Engineering

1. Sónia Cristina Almeida Neves
2. A. Marques
3. Margarida Patrício

Citations in the corpus

• Determinants of CO2 emissions in European Union countries: Does environmental regulation reduce environmental pollution? (2020, background): “Since the technologies associated with RES involve large amounts of investment (Marques and Fuinhas, 2012), inward FDI was included too verify if the investment was made to reduce environmental pollution (Zhang et al., 2020).”