There are obvious differences between different types of environmental regulation, which are manifested in different environmental protection tendencies and goals, and there are also significant differences in policy implementation. Therefore, it is an urgent empirical problem to quantitatively evaluate the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulation on the upgrading of industrial structures. Therefore, on the basis of measuring the level of industrial structure upgrading, this paper empirically tests the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulation on industrial structure upgrading. The results show that the upgrading level of China's industrial structure increased year by year from 2000 to 2018. The three types of environmental regulatory measures have effectively promoted the upgrading of the industrial structure, and the market-incentive environmental regulation (MER) has a significantly higher role in the advancement of the industrial structure than the command-controlled environmental regulation (CER) and the voluntary public participation environmental regulation (VER). With the improvement of regional economic development level, the three types of environmental regulation have gradually become more prominent in promoting the upgrading of industrial structure. In the mechanism test, it is found that technological innovation has a partial mediating effect in the process of CER affecting the upgrading of industrial structure, MER and public VER have a complete mediating effect, while foreign direct investment (FDI) has only a partial mediating effect in the process of the three types of environmental regulation affecting industrial advancement, and there is no mediating effect in the process of influencing the rationalization of industrial structure.

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Free trade zone (FTZ) in China has been demonstrating remarkable achievements since its establishment, yet its effects on the environment in the zones cannot be ignored. However, there is still a lack of research on the impact of the quasi-natural experiment in the China pilot FTZ on China’s environment. Based on this, this paper uses panel data from 196 cities in China from 2010 to 2017 and uses the propensity score matching and difference in difference (PSM-DID) model to empirically test the environmental effects of the establishment of the FTZ. The result shows that there is an obvious causal relationship between the establishment of the FTZ and environmental quality. The establishment of the FTZ has exacerbated the environmental pollution problem in the pilot zone. Through a series of robustness tests, it is concluded that the estimated results of the benchmark model are robust. However, after a further study on whether the effect of the FTZ on environment is time varying, it was found that the effects of the FTZ on the environmental pollution in the test zones gradually weakened over time, which means that with the gradual maturity of China’s free trade pilot zone, the positive effect on environmental improvement will gradually highlight.

There are obvious differences between different types of environmental regulations, which are manifested in different environmental protection tendencies and goals, and there are also significant differences in policy implementation. Therefore, it is an urgent empirical problem to quantitatively evaluate the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulations on the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure. Based on this, this paper empirically tests the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulations on the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure on the basis of measuring the level of industrial structure transformation and upgrading. The results show that the transformation and upgrading level of China's industrial structure increased year by year from 2000 to 2017. The three types of environmental regulatory measures have effectively promoted the transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure, and the market incentive environmental regulation (MER) has a significantly higher role in the advancement of the industrial structure than the command-controlled environmental regulation (CER) and the voluntary public participation environmental regulation (VER). The three types of environmental regulations have gradually highlighted the role of environmental regulations in promoting the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure with the improvement of the level of regional economic development. In the mechanism test, it is found that technological innovation has partial mediating effect in the process of CER affecting the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure, MER and public VER have complete mediating effect, while FDI has only partial mediating effect in the process of three types of environmental regulation affecting the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure.