Environmental collaborative governance effect of heterogeneous responsible subjects

Abstract

The “multi- party collaboration” environmental governance system with Chinese characteristics, with the government playing the leading role, corporate taking key responsibilities, and public participation, is an important way to enhance the responsibility of environmental subjects, improve the quality of the ecological environment, and promote the high- quality economic development. From the perspective of internal and external collaboration of heterogeneous environmental responsibility subjects and based on the data of 31 provinces in China and 1423 A-share industrial listed companies from 2011 to 2017, this study used the high-dimensional fixed effect model to analyze the collaborative governance effect of“multi- party collaboration”environmental responsibility subjects in improving quality, reducing emissions, and increasing efficiency. Under the background of continuous increase in environmental supervision and timely adjustment of government regulations for environmental pollution control, this study investigated the moderating effect of environmental policy uncertainty on the collaborative governance of environmental responsibility subjects. The results show that: (1) The internal coordination of government regulatory responsibility and public supervision responsibility had a significant“quality improvement”effect, forcing enterprises to actively fulfill their environmental responsibilities, improving their awareness of environmental responsibility and development quality. (2) The external coordination of government regulatory responsibility, corporate environmental responsibility, and public supervision responsibility played a significant“emission reduction”and“efficiency enhancement”role, which not only reduces the level of regional pollution emissions, improves the efficiency of environmental governance, but also significantly improves the level of regional green contribution and effectively promotes green and high-quality development. (3) Environmental policy uncertainty releases the signal of accurate policy implementation, timely adjustment, and efficient matching according to the time, place, and event, therefore effectively improves the collaborative governance effect of“multi-party collaboration”. The study is of great practical significance for accelerating the improvement of the environmental governance mechanism of multi- party collaboration and promoting the incentive compatibility between economic development and environmental protection.