Do renewable energy, environmental regulations and green innovation matter for China's zero carbon transition: Evidence from green total factor productivity.

Rapid developments in environmental infrastructure have contributed to significant improvements in green total factor productivity, but further investigation is required to provide a detailed assessment to understand the policy mechanisms involved. This paper analyzes environmental progress in China through MMQR, CCEMG, and AMG as empirical strategies for 30 provinces in China. Our empirical results reveal that energy optimization through renewable energy is the most effective channel to improve green total factor productivity, though it is not the only available option. Since environmental regulations, infrastructure development, and green technology innovation also directly impact energy efficiency, adopting these within policy channels will positively impact environmental sustainability. Our empirical approach helps suggest novel environmental policy suggestions. In particular, policymakers must introduce structural changes within energy developments to foster renewable energy. Furthermore, China must increase environmental spending to upgrade its energy infrastructure further and solve ecological issues. These insights offer valuable policy guidance for decision-makers in China and globally, aiming to foster economic and environmental sustainability and achieve zero-carbon transition goals.

Moderating role of green innovation and fiscal expenditure towards achieving the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 at provincial-level in China: policy implication from green total factor productivity.

Amidst resource loss and environmental protection constraints, achieving green development necessitates enhancing green total factor productivity (GTFP) as a means of promoting rational and efficient resource allocation, thereby balancing economic growth and environmental preservation. Meanwhile, literature on the subject matter of GTFP from a sustainability viewpoint is minimal. As a result, this study employs the panel dataset from 30 provinces of China spanning the period 2005 to 2020 and utilizes the method of moments quantile regression (MMQR) developed by Machado and Santos Silva (2019) to analyze the heterogeneous role of green innovation, environmental regulations, and fiscal expenditure on GTFP. Moreover, the controlling variable for this study includes renewable energy and economic growth. Furthermore, this study investigates the heterogeneous combined impact of green innovation and fiscal expenditure (GTE*FSE) on GTFP. The findings of the MMQR reveal that green innovation has a positive impact on GTFP, while fiscal expenditure, environmental regulations, and renewable energy consumption have a negative impact. GTE*FSE has a positive and significant effect on GTFP, indicating that FSE can reinforce and increase the positive impact of GTE on GTFP in the long run. The study also reveals that economic growth has a mixed effect on GTFP, depending on the quantiles. Furthermore, environmental regulation has a significant and negative impact on GTFP, contradicting the Porter hypothesis. Likewise, the robustness of the findings is confirmed by the results of the fully modified OLS (FMOLS) and dynamic OLS (DOLS) estimations, which indicate a similar impact of the determinants on GTFP as observed in the MMQR analysis. This reinforces the validity of the findings and suggests that the observed relationships are robust to different estimation techniques. Furthermore, the findings of the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (D-H) panel causality test reveal significant bidirectional causality between renewable energy consumption and GTFP and fiscal expenditure and GTFP. Policy-makers need to channel a large chuck of their fiscal spending into green innovation so as to boost sustainability.

The Economic Effects of Direct and Indirect Employee Involvement: Evidence From Corporate Social Responsibility Reports of Chinese Listed Companies.

Employee direct involvement and indirect involvement have been identified as essential forms of an enterprise's democratic management in the digital economy. Research on the complementary effects of direct and indirect involvement is still in a blank state in China, which limits the external validity and accumulation of employee participation theory. The present study aimed to investigate the complementary effects of employee direct involvement and indirect involvement on the firm's financial performance. Although previous research suggests that the influence of employee direct or indirect involvement on corporate financial performance has been examined separately, it is unclear whether the association between employee direct involvement and indirect involvement is complementary or conflictual. Based on strategic human resource management theory, we semantically encode 2,680 corporate social responsibility reports and the annual reports of 268 state-owned listed enterprises published from 2014 to 2018 via content analysis method, and the economic effects of employee direct involvement and indirect involvement were concurrently measured. We use configuration theory to explore the complementary effects between employee direct involvement and indirect involvement. Our results reveal that (1) employee involvement in Chinese enterprises was unbalanced, (2) both employee direct involvement and indirect involvement were positively related to enterprise's financial performance, and (3) there is a complementary effect between the two forms of employee involvement. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.