This paper proposes an improved three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to measure the environmental-economic efficiency (EEE) of air pollution control for 30 province-level areas of China during the period of 2012 to 2016. In this model, capital, labor, and total energy consumption are the three inputs, while gross domestic product (GDP) and waste gas emissions represent the desirable and undesirable outputs, respectively. This model allows the weights of economic growth and environmental protection to be adjusted as needed by policymakers; the model is adopted to evaluate the effects of government measures on environmental protection and economic growth. Ultimately, the effects from environmental factors and statistical noise are excluded from the EEEs of local governments and the managerial efficiencies are calculated. The results simultaneously reflect the local performance of air pollution control and economic development, which can be used to clarify the ranking of provinces nationwide.
The classification of livelihood strategies is important for designing effective and targeted poverty-reducing strategies. This paper classified livelihood strategies adopting the activity choice approach and compared differences among income levels, asset endowments, poverty rates, and poverty causes of different household clusters to provide bases for the identification of targeted poverty-reducing strategies. By making the two-step cluster analysis, 2042 households were divided into four clusters. Agricultural households get a relatively low income because of the reliance on agricultural production and the lack of required assets to enter more remunerative livelihood strategies. Self-employment is the most remunerative livelihood strategy and high physical and financial capital accumulations are the premise of adopting a self-employed strategy. Featured with a medium-level income and asset endowments, wage-employed households benefit from a more-educated labor force and shoulder a heavy burden caused by children's education at the same time. Besides, rural households face a series of social issues from labor migration, especially self-employed and wage-employed households. Non-labor households have a low-level income and asset endowments with older family members and an unhealthier labor force caused mainly by the aging population and accompanying diseases and disabilities. The transfer income-oriented non-labor households are the main object of poverty alleviation.The sustainable livelihoods framework provides another alternative multidimensional perspective for development and poverty studies. In the framework, people make/undertake a range of choices/activities to achieve livelihood outcomes on the basis of asset endowments. Meanwhile, a battery of internal and external factors will exert important impacts on the system, including vulnerability context and transforming structures and processes [10]. Livelihood strategies denote the range and combination of activities converting possessed livelihood assets into expected livelihood outcomes. The classification of livelihood strategies is essential for revealing different livelihood patterns and designing targeted poverty-reducing interventions.Approaches of classifying livelihood strategies incorporate the asset-based approach, activity choice approach and income-based approach. The asset-based approach classifies livelihood strategies from the perspective of input according to asset allocation across different activities [11] or asset portfolios [12]. However, it is hard for the asset-based approach to capture nonproductive income-generating activities not involving asset inputs or difficult to measure asset inputs into them, such as investment, retirement, transfer payment, etc. The income-based approach classifies livelihood strategies from the perspective of output according to income from a certain source, for example, nonfarm income [13,14], forest income [15], cash transfer income [16], etc., or income from several sub-divided sources (income compositi...
Given its wide involvement in and recognition by international organizations, China has signed many international agreements and negotiations. This study verified how and the extent to which changes in exogenous factors (e.g., international agreements and negotiations) affect Chinese governmental air protection policy development. Previous studies on policy network theory have demonstrated that exogenous factors affected the development of domestic policies significantly, while in this study little evidence was found to demonstrate the influence of exogenous factors on changes in Chinese policy. Rather, internal factors have played an important role in both its development and transformation. These findings differ from study results on wealthy countries and other developing districts. This study then explores the causes of substandard policy outcomes. To probe this further, policy network theory is applied to explain the gap between the guiding principle of central government’s policies and local implementation in actual practice. By analyzing the strategies of policy actors and specific rules in current Chinese context, the associated limitations and obstacles in the process of policy-making and implementation can be explained from the aspect of bureaucratic system, energy market running mechanism and others. This paper recommends alterations in the current policy and structure based on these findings.
New rural construction is practiced across the country and northern Jiangsu is one of them. In accordance with the overview of the current new rural development, the problem existing in the new rural construction is put forward, namely, the phenomenon that the current village landscape designs are similar lies in large amounts of new rural areas. New rural construction in northern Jiangsu can draw lessons from this problem. Starting from features of the local residence in northern Jiangsu to the exploration for the cultural value and significance of the local residence, some suggestions are provided for the protection of the local residence during the new rural construction in northern Jiangsu.
From foreign experience and lessons, the urban living space differentiation has brought about serious social problems. At present, during the large-scale urban residential development and construction process in China, there is a trend of differentiation, but it is not yet fully formed. In this regard, the author is trying to find out the ways to build affordable housing communities through such measures as the government policy guidance, the building of a harmonious community, the employment of mixed living pattern, and the heritage of humanistic ideas.
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