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Arid Land Geography ›› 2023, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (1): 139-148.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2022.169

• Regional Development • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Can environmental regulation promote the performance of factors in the Yellow River Basin?

SHENG Yanchao(),XU Shan(),ZHOU Yao   

  1. School of Public Administration and Human Geography, Hunan University of Technology and Business, Changsha 410205, Hunan, China
  • Received:2022-04-22 Revised:2022-07-29 Online:2023-01-25 Published:2023-02-21

Abstract:

Because ecological protection and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin in China have been elevated as national strategies, it is critical to fully explore factor performance, the microeconomic foundation of high-quality economic development, despite the constraints of the environment. According to Marxist political economics, factor performance consists of factor quality and efficiency. The former one, which stands for the production capacity of factors, is the indispensable premise to fully effect factor performance, whereas the latter one is an inherent requirement to fulfill it. Factor quality and efficiency are integrated into a unified analytical framework to construct an indicator, factor performance. Based on the interactive mechanism between the influences of environmental regulation on upgrading factor quality and on improving factor efficiency, this research empirically analyzed the impact of environmental regulation on factor performance in the Yellow River Basin from 2008 to 2019 using the fixed effect model and mediation model. The results are as follows: (1) Environmental regulation upgrades factor quality through population agglomeration, improves factor efficiency through industrial structure optimization, and thus, promotes factor performance with the joint efforts of the improved factor quality and efficiency. (2) The graphical relationships between environmental regulation and factor quality, efficiency, and performance are U-shaped. (3) The influence of environmental regulation on factor performance varies significantly because of different city scales and economic development levels. Therefore, in areas with high-level economic development, environmental regulation promotes factor performance significantly; in areas with low-level economic development or small urban scale, environmental regulation first inhibits and then boosts factor performance, presenting a U-shaped relationship; notably, in large-scale cities, the relationship between environmental regulation and factor performance is not distinctive. Reasonable standards and intensity of environmental regulation should be determined, and differentiated environmental regulation policies should be formulated according to local conditions so that ecological protection and high-quality economic development in the Yellow River Basin can be achieved.

Key words: environmental regulation, factor performance, factor quality, factor efficiency, Yellow River Basin