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Implementation of a multi-agent environmental regulation strategy under fiscal decentralization
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Author: Ke Jiang, Central South U.
Author: Daming You, Central South U.
Author: Zhendong Li, Tianjin U.
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At present, the main environmental issue facing China is extensive economic development, resulting from the Chinese government’s policy of “fiscal decentralization”. In this context of decentralization, China’s environmental governance system assigns management authority based on administrative divisions and provides vertical leadership in accordance with the constitution at the government level. In other words, the central government develops a unified environmental policy, which the local governments are responsible for implementing in their respective jurisdictions. Meanwhile, the local governments are also influenced by the private interests of enterprises, and have incentive to conspire with polluting enterprises, leading to incomplete implementation of regulation strategies. To provide a relevant theoretical basis for the strict implementation of environmental regulations under the fiscally decentralized system of China, we use evolutionary economics research tools to build an evolutionary game framework, which includes the central government, local governments, and polluting enterprises. Using replicator dynamics analysis, we explore the evolution of different participants’ behavior and their evolutionarily stable strategy. Next, based on the model solution, a MATLAB simulation tool is applied to analyze the different agents’ evolutionary steady strategy trends under different situations and their convergence trend. The results show that dynamic evolution among the three agents under the environmental regulation policy is mainly affected by the central government’s regulatory efforts, costs, administrative penalties, local governments’ environmental strengths and subsidy rate, and enterprises’ pollution-reduction efforts and taxation rate. To ensure the efficient execution of environmental regulation strategies, related policy recommendations are presented to encourage the benign transformation of environmental performance into economic performance, and to achieve a “centrally-oriented, locally-promoted and enterprise-reduced” low- carbon situation.
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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The Dialectics of Climate Imaginaries
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Author: Juliet Roper, U. of Waikato
Author: Eva Marie Collins, U. of Waikato
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This paper builds on Levy and Spicer’s (2013) description of successive climate imaginaries to make two key contributions: first, by presenting empirical evidence of the discursive nature of dialectic tensions that surround issues of climate change mitigation, from a government perspective; and second, by demonstrating that the ground is paved for an entirely new climate regime. Focused on New Zealand over a nine-year period of continuous government, the evidence suggests that while the Government has long been able to deflect challenges to its approach to sustainability and carbon reduction, certain tensions can no longer be sidestepped. Faced by multi-faceted dialectic dilemmas, a growing number of business leaders are now calling for regulated approaches to climate change mitigation. This represents a disruptive shift away from the hitherto hegemonic laissez-faire economic system in which Levy and Spicer’s climate imaginaries of “fossil fuels forever” and “techno-market” are embedded. We call the emergent climate regime “smart regulation”, a term that is echoed world-wide.
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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(In)formality and the institutional logics of (un)sustainability in an emerging market
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Author: Robson Rocha, Aarhus U.
Author: Maria Daniella De Oliveira Pereira Da Silva, UFPB - U. Federal da Paraíba
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The sustainable management of natural resources by industry is increasingly coming under public scrutiny. This article investigates the responses of firms in two industrial clusters in Brazil to the enforcement of environmental legislation. Its findings demonstrate a divergence in typologies that reflects both the strategies of local law- enforcement officials and firms’ resources. The article also extends our understanding of how firms’ resources affect strategic responses to institutional pressures. We show that the informalization of the economy is a highly problematic strategy for sustainability. We discuss the need to develop policy instruments capable of creating a space in which to negotiate the gradual enforcement of environmental legislation. Our findings provide insights for policy design in times of increasingly catastrophic pollution in regions immersed in global competition.
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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Corporate Environmentalism: Second Stage Moderated Mediation Model
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Author: Farida Saleem, U. of Lahore, Gujrat Campus
Author: C Gopinath, Suffolk U.
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In this study, we evaluated the corporate environmental activities within the framework of stakeholders’ concern, political and economic perspective and slack resource view while taking a developing country as the field of study. This paper integrates these three view and corporate environmental behavior to develop a model and then tests this model in a developing country’s context. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey from managers operating in a variety of industries in Pakistan. Conditional indirect effects were checked with the help of PROCESS macro for SPSS developed by Hayes (2013). Results revealed that the regulatory forces and competitive advantage have direct as well as conditional indirect effect on corporate environmental strategies while have only conditional indirect effects on marketing environmental strategies through top management commitment at different levels of discretionary slack. However, customer concern remains inconsequential antecedent with having insignificant conditional indirect effect on corporate and marketing environmental strategies through top management commitment at different levels of discretionary slack.
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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Carbon Risk, the Green Paradox, and Strategic Behavior in the US Petroleum Sector
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Author: Ryan Knowles Merrill, Singapore Management U.
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William H. Newman Award Nominee
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In anticipating how energy firms respond to regulatory threat, a tension appears between the Green Paradox hypothesis of risk-induced extraction and theories of strategic risk management. The former holds that tightening regulatory regimes will incentivize accelerated extraction of fossil fuels, while the latter predicts firms will engage in self-regulation or reapportion investment towards a cleaner energy mix. This research tests these ostensibly contradictory theories in the context of oil markets, exploiting variation in oil revenues and reserves under dynamic policy signaling to estimate impacts on US energy majors' investment behavior from 1991-2009. Analysis confirms the Green Paradox hypothesis with further evidence of capacity- attenuated risk-induced investment. Results indicate a threat of backfire from suboptimal regulatory design and call attention to smaller-scale firms who may be most industrious in accelerating oil production in anticipation of government interventions to fight climate change.
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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