How Do Different Types of Environmental Regulations Affect Green Energy Efficiency? – A Study Based on fsQCA

Abstract

Faced with both economic and environmental pressures, how to improve energy efficiency in a green way is gradually attracting attention. Reasonable environmental regulations can promote the green transformation of energy and improve green energy efficiency, which is of great practical significance for achieving global sustainable development. This paper measures the green energy efficiency of 30 Chinese provinces in 2019 based on the Super-SBM model, selects five representative antecedent conditions of three environmental regulation dimensions: command-and-control, market-incentive, and voluntary public, and uses fsQCA to explore the group effects and enhancement paths of different types of environmental regulations on green energy efficiency. The results found that (1) there are four green energy efficiency enhancement paths: government pressure type, market mobilization type, government-led public association type, and multiple subject type; (2) command-and-control type environmental regulations play an important role in enhancing green energy efficiency in most provinces; and (3) multiple subject type enhancement paths can achieve higher green energy efficiency. This study investigates the impact of environmental regulation on green energy efficiency in order to provide reference and reference for the improvement of green energy efficiency in China’s provinces.