The role of government support in sustainable urban development has always been a research topic of scholars, but research focusing on the relationship between government innovation support and urban green sustainable development is still relatively rare. This article uses China’s innovative city pilot policy (ICPP) to represent the innovation support provided by the government and address the interaction mechanism and the spatial spillover effect of China’s innovative city pilot policy (ICPP), green technology innovation (GTI), and green sustainable development performance (GSDP) with the support of the mediating effect model and the spatial econometric model. Based on panel data of 24 cities in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration from 2001 to 2020, this paper establishes an evaluation index system of green sustainable development performance (GSDP), measuring with the SBM directional distance function based on the undesired output. This paper adopts the spatial difference-in-difference model (SDID) to study the impact mechanism of the ICPP on the GSDP in the Yangtze River Delta. The results show that (i) there is a positive spatial spillover effect of GSDP in the urban agglomeration of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration; (ii) ICPP has a significantly positive effect on GSDP, as verified by several robustness checks; (iii) green technology innovation plays a partial mediating effect in the relationship of the ICPP and GSDP.
China’s forest products manufacturing industry is experiencing the dual pressure of forest protection policies and wood scarcity and, therefore, it is of great significance to reveal the spatial agglomeration characteristics and evolution drivers of this industry to enhance its sustainable development. Based on the perspective of large-scale agglomeration in a continuous space, in this study, we used the spatial Gini coefficient and standard deviation ellipse method to investigate the spatial agglomeration degree and location distribution characteristics of China’s forest products manufacturing industry, and we used exploratory spatial data analysis to investigate its spatial agglomeration pattern. The results show that: (1) From 1988 to 2018, the degree of spatial agglomeration of China’s forest products manufacturing industry was relatively low, and the industry was characterized by a very pronounced imbalance in its spatial distribution. (2) The industry has a very clear core–periphery structure, the spatial distribution exhibits a “northeast-southwest” pattern, and the barycenter of the industrial distribution has tended to move south. (3) The industry mainly has a high–high and low–low spatial agglomeration pattern. The provinces with high–high agglomeration are few and concentrated in the southeast coastal area. (4) The spatial agglomeration and evolution characteristics of China’s forest products manufacturing industry may be simultaneously affected by forest protection policies, sources of raw materials, international trade and the degree of marketization. In the future, China’s forest products manufacturing industry should further increase the level of spatial agglomeration to fully realize the economies of scale.
This paper presents novel empirical evidence on the welfare impacts of forest protection programs, focusing on both income and material welfare at the household level. Specifically, we conduct a household survey of 1271 households in forestry communities that participate in the Natural Forest Protection Program (NFPP) in China. The survey data are collected from 56 state forest enterprises (SFEs) across three provinces in China. We employ the Alkire–Foster method to calculate and decompose the material deprivation index based on household income levels. Our analysis reveals that forestry communities exhibit a significant proportion of households in low-income welfare states, comprising nearly one-fourth (25.41%) of the sample. Furthermore, we observe that the percentage of households in a low-material welfare state is nearly one-fifth (21.70%), with 7.79% of households experiencing both low-income and low-material welfare. Importantly, we find that welfare disparities persist across population subgroups based on occupation and geography. In addition, we assess the impact of the NFPP on household welfare outcomes and identify an elite group of technicians residing in urban communities down the hill who experience positive welfare effects from the program. These findings provide critical insights beyond a single welfare dimension and contribute to the growing literature on evaluating forest protection policies. Furthermore, the results offer valuable lessons for designing and implementing forest protection programs in other developing countries.
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