School of Economics and Management, Harbin Engineering University, Nantong Street, Nangang District, Harbin, 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 Jan;29(4):6125-6139. doi: 10.1007/s11356-021-15963-3. Epub 2021 Aug 26.
Developing green economy has become the focus of governments, scholars, and entrepreneurs all over the world; however, the realization path of green economic efficiency for the regions under the interaction of multiple factors has still been uncertain. This study takes 30 provincial-level regions in China as the empirical object and applies a new method of fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to explore the configuration of conditions for achieving green economic efficiency, which effectively improves the link between theory and practice. This study reveals that the improvement of green economy efficiency is the result of the joint action of multiple factors, and one factor in isolation is not enough for explaining it. Besides, there exist three equivalent paths to achieve high green economic efficiency; therefore, regions can design the most appropriate promotion strategy according to the determined paths. The result shows that high marketization is the core condition for achieving high green economy efficiency. Among the three paths, the combination of environmental regulation, urbanization, marketization, and technological innovation has the highest unique coverage, which alone explains how most regions have achieved high green economic efficiency. Third, four paths for achieving low green economy efficiency have been identified in this study, which provides lessons for regional governments to avoid the decline in green economy efficiency. And specially, the combination of high urbanization, high environment regulation, and high technological innovation can lead to low green economy efficiency because of low marketization. The conclusion improves the theory of green development and provides a practical reference for the regional government to develop green economy.
发展绿色经济已成为世界各国政府、学者和企业家关注的焦点；然而，在多种因素相互作用下，各地区实现绿色经济效率的路径仍不确定。本研究以中国 30 个省级地区为实证对象，采用模糊集定性比较分析的新方法，探讨了实现绿色经济效率的条件配置，有效提高了理论与实践之间的联系。本研究表明，绿色经济效率的提高是多种因素共同作用的结果，孤立的一个因素不足以解释这一现象。此外，实现高绿色经济效率存在三种等效路径；因此，各地区可以根据确定的路径设计最合适的推广策略。研究结果表明，高度市场化是实现高绿色经济效率的核心条件。在这三种路径中，环境规制、城市化、市场化和技术创新的结合具有最高的独特覆盖率，单独解释了大多数地区如何实现高绿色经济效率。第三，本研究还确定了实现低绿色经济效率的四条路径，为地区政府避免绿色经济效率下降提供了借鉴。特别是，高城市化、高环境规制和高技术创新的结合可能导致低绿色经济效率，因为市场化程度较低。该结论完善了绿色发展理论，为地方政府发展绿色经济提供了实践参考。
