Is environmental regulation a blessing or a curse for China's urban land use efficiency? Evidence from a threshold effect model

Abstract

Severe land shortage causes a higher demand for domestic and foreign land‐intensive products. As a result, resource utilization, and related environmental issues, will increase in urban areas. To this respect, the analysis of the impact of environmental regulation on urban land use efficiency helps to identify potential points for interventions designed to ensure sustainable land use. This study first introduces a theoretical framework to investigate the micro‐transmission mechanism of environmental regulation on urban land use efficiency. Our profit decision‐making model concludes that the impact of environmental regulation on urban land use efficiency is influenced by changes in the industrial structure. Empirically, our preliminary analysis suggests that in addition to population density, both formal and informal environmental regulation can promote urban land use efficiency, with a significant spatial heterogeneity across the sample regions. Further, this study shows a remarkable double‐threshold relationship between formal environmental regulation and urban land use efficiency in China. We clarify and confirm that environmental regulation promoted urban land use efficiency only when regulation intensity was higher than 0.8612. Environmental regulation increased urban land use efficiency in high‐level industrial rationalization areas, whereas it had the opposite effect in low‐level ones. Furthermore, there was a clear marginal diminishing effect of the impact of environmental regulation on urban land use efficiency when the optimization of the industrial structure was set as a threshold variable.

Performance evaluation, environmental regulation, and urban land green use efficiency: Evidence from China

“…Hypothesis 1 is verified. This is consistent with the findings of Zhang et al, He and An, Liu et al 72–74 (for methods and findings refer to Appendix ). Based on the regression results in column (7) of Table 4, we can see that the regression coefficient of environmental regulation on ULGUE is 6.408, indicating that environmental regulation increased by 1% can improve ULGUE by 6.408%.…”

The waste ban in China: what happened next? Assessing the impact of new policies on the waste management sector in China

“…3 , the frequency of updates or revisions of major policies shows higher level of activity from 2015 onwards. It includes major policy changes related to environmental issues and reflects broader changes in formal environmental regulation intensity (Zhang et al, 2021 ), which shows significant cross-regional variation in regulation of emission to air, water, and re-use of wastes. The disposal of waste is still dominated by landfills although combustion has increased, and more regulations and policies are being adopted to encourage a more circular economy.…”

Environmental regulation, land use efficiency and industrial structure upgrading: Test analysis based on spatial durbin model and threshold effect

“…Distinctive forms of environmental regulations also have heterogeneity in their effects on LUE. Zhang et al argue that both IER and FER can improve LUE, and only when the intensity of ER exceeds 0.8612, the regulations can enhance urban LUE [ 40 ]. The impact of environmental regulations on LUE can be understood from two perspectives: “mechanism cost effect” and “Porter effect.” The mechanism cost effect refers to the governance costs brought about by environmental regulations, such as environmental protection taxes, pollution control equipment, and production process updates, which force companies to face strong financing constraints.…”