Synthetic Evaluation of China's Regional Low-Carbon Economy Challenges by Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response Model.

The "driver-pressure-state-impact-response" (DPSIR) model has recently become a popular approach to deal with environmental problems. The combination of DPSIR with analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is a useful method to study low-carbon evaluation because the AHP model has a special advantage in multi-indexes evaluation. This paper constructs the low-carbon economy evaluation system and comprehensively evaluates the numerical value of low-carbon economic development of China's 30 regions from 2000 to 2015 by using the AHP method. It shows that the numerical value of low-carbon economy of China's 30 regions varies in terms of growth rate. The numerical value of east regional low-carbon economy shows a pattern that is gradually higher than that of the west region. The numerical value of low carbon economic development in the south region is higher than that of the north region by degrees. In addition, based on the model of coordination degree in 2015, the result indicated that the four subsystems have primary coordination in the east area and bare coordination in the central and west areas. It is indicated that the four sub-indexes should be developed at the same pace and promoting the development of a low-carbon economy in the mid-west areas is the key in China. Finally, we proposed that environmental regulations and policies should be formulated to improve coordination in various aspects and various departments. Calculating the degree of low-carbon economic coupling coordination may be helpful for policy makers to formulate effective policies and take actions in the future.

The effect of expected financial performance on corporate environmental responsibility disclosure: evidence from China.

Nowadays, firms spend a great deal of effort on Corporate Environmental Responsibility (CER) disclosure. From prospect theory, firms might disclose more CER information when they fail to achieve expected financial performance of the organization. We have constructed a CER disclosure index based on the "Guidelines for Environmental Information Disclosure of Listed Companies" issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection of China in 2010. Using content analysis, we analyze 397 Chinese manufacturing Shanghai A-share listed firms from 2011 to 2017 (2090 firm-year observations) to investigate the relationship between corporate expected financial performance and CER disclosure. Our results show that, firstly, when the firm does not achieve the expected performance that is when the actual expectation is lower than the expected performance of the organization, the disclosure of corporate environmental responsibility increases; secondly, we have explored the moderating effect of industry categories; we have found that when firms fail to achieve the expected performance of the organization, light polluting firms are more inclined towards disclosing the environmental responsibility information than heavy polluting firms. Additionally, we have also studied the behavior of corporate environmental responsibility disclosure in the case of analysts expecting performance as a point of reference and got the same results.

China's Pathway towards Solar Energy Utilization: Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy.

Rapid economic growth has caused many environmental problems in China, resulting in international pressure on China to fight against climate change and to shift to a more environmentally friendly economy. Therefore, over the past decades, China has been working on transforming its economy to counter the concerns of different environmental hazards caused by the burning fossil fuels and rising oil imports to support the energy sector. This study explores the shift in the Chinese government's policies towards a low-carbon economy by adopting more environmentally friendly solar energy. A cost-benefit analysis of the solar water heater industry in China indicates that it not only brings economic benefits to society but also environmental benefits to the earth. Furthermore, this paper focuses on the use of solar energy as a kind of renewable energy, as solar energy is plentiful, which is beneficial from both an environmental and economic perspective.