Regulatory distance and corporate environmental performance: From the perspective of rent-seeking distance.

This paper investigates the impact of regulatory distance on corporate environmental performance using data from Chinese A-share listed companies. The results demonstrate that staying away from regulatory agencies significantly improves corporate environmental performance. The potential impact mechanism is that the increase in regulatory distance significantly suppresses rent-seeking activities. The above impacts are particularly pronounced in companies with weak CEO political and financial connections, state-owned enterprises, and firms in regions with low levels of marketization, owing to the fact that these company characteristics influence firms' ability or inclination to participate in rent-seeking. Further evidence indicates that the effect of regulatory distance on environmental performance will be significantly enhanced by strengthening media regulation and anti-corruption efforts.

Turnover of environmental protection officials and transboundary water pollution.

Considering the situation of the frequent turnover of Chinese environmental protection officials (EPOT), this paper analyzes its impact on transboundary water pollution. The results show that EPOT can reduce transboundary pollution. EPOT can reduce the concentration of DO by 0.261 and NH3-N by 0.167 in the downstream river. And the impact shows a first strong and then weak change over time. EPOT can restrain transboundary pollution by reducing the production of polluting enterprises and promoting public pollution reporting, and it aggravates transboundary pollution by reducing environmental law enforcement and collaborative governance. In addition, the impact of EPOT on transboundary pollution has a distance effect. Within the regulatory distance of 50 km, EPOT has strong inhibition on transboundary pollution. When the governor and the environmental protection official (EPO) change tenure at the same time, the inhibition of transboundary pollution is the strongest. In addition, EPOs from the central government and with working experience in environmental protection departments can control transboundary pollution better.