Qiuguang Hu

Against the ongoing pursuit of ecological civilization and the Beautiful China agenda, understanding how environmental policies influence corporate sustainable development has become increasingly important. This study aims to examine whether and how the “Zero-Waste City” pilot policy affects corporate ESG performance and to identify the underlying mechanisms through which the policy influences firms’ sustainability outcomes. Based on a panel dataset of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2014 to 2024, this study exploits the phased implementation of the “Zero-Waste City” pilot program as a quasi-natural experiment and employs a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model to estimate its causal effects. The results show that the “Zero-Waste City” pilot policy significantly improves corporate ESG performance. Mechanism analyses reveal that the policy promotes ESG performance through three channels: alleviating financing constraints, stimulating green technological innovation, and enhancing corporate environmental attention. Further heterogeneity analyses indicate that the policy effects are more pronounced among firms located in central China, traditional industries, heavy-polluting industries, and large enterprises. Additional analysis shows that the policy mainly improves firms’ environmental (E) and governance (G) performance. This study contributes to the literature by providing micro-level evidence on how environmental governance policies shape corporate sustainability outcomes. The findings offer important implications for improving policy design and facilitating firms’ green transformation. Future research could further explore the long-term dynamic effects, spatial spillover mechanisms, and alternative approaches to measuring corporate sustainability performance.

Against the backdrop of increasing global emphasis on sustainable development and ecological conservation, green seafood has emerged as a key component of sustainable marine food consumption. However, the discrepancy between consumers’ intention to consume and their consumption behavior remains a critical issue requiring in-depth investigation. Herein, based on survey data collected from 415 consumers in China in 2025, this study employs structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the determinants and mechanisms influencing green seafood consumption intention and behavior. The findings indicate that heightened concerns regarding dietary health, food safety, and nutrition significantly enhance consumer intention, driven primarily by ecological awareness and the pursuit of a higher quality of life. Individual and household characteristics, along with consumers’ cognitive status of green seafood, exert significant positive effects on consumption intention, with cognitive status demonstrating the strongest influence. Nevertheless, a notable gap exists between consumption intention and actual behavior. Among respondents with consumption intention, only 48.7% had ever purchased green seafood, and the consumption frequency remained generally low. SEM path coefficients further reveal that marketing factors play a dominant role in actualizing consumption behavior. Compared to marketing factors, consumption intention shows a relatively weaker effect in facilitating consumption behavior. This finding further confirms the intention–behavior gap in green seafood consumption. The intention–behavior gap in green seafood consumption is jointly driven by asymmetric information on product quality, an underdeveloped certification system, a relatively undiversified supply structure, and elevated prices. Accordingly, this study proposes an integrated strategy that includes establishing a unified certification and traceability system, optimizing supply structures and pricing mechanisms, and strengthening science communication and targeted marketing. These measures aim to bridge the intention–behavior gap and promote the transition toward sustainable consumption patterns.

Introduction: The construction of marine ranches, as a crucial component of implementing the "Big Food Concept" and the "Strengthening the Ocean" strategy, provides new solutions for the sustainable development of marine resources and the growth of the fishery economy.Methods: This study centers on investigating the impact mechanisms of marine ranch demonstration zones on fishery output value, employing a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model with panel data from 43 coastal prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2007 to 2022 to empirically evaluate policy effects at municipal level.Results: Key findings reveal that marine ranch demonstration zone construction significantly drives fishery output growth by improving marine ecosystems, extending industrial chains, and conserving biological resources, thereby enhancing fisheries' stability and sustainability while upgrading economic quality and efficiency; policy effects exhibit spatial and typological heterogeneity, with enhancement-oriented and recreation-oriented marine ranches demonstrating more pronounced impacts, while cities in the East and South China Sea regions capitalize more effectively on the economic benefits.Discussion: These findings position marine ranch as a critical pathway transforming ecological benefits into economic gains. We propose accelerating sustainable "blue granary" development through three strategic priorities: refining modern marine ranch policy frameworks, implementing regionally differentiated strategies, and fostering diversified synergistic development approaches.

This study employs an evolutionary game theory framework to analyze the interactive learning, imitation, and strategic evolution among multiple actors within China’s aquatic product traceability system. It focuses on four types of strategic interactions: between fishers and the government, fishers and consumers, fishers who adopt the traceability system and those who do not, and between consumers who purchase traceable aquatic products and those who do not. The evolutionarily stable strategies and equilibrium outcomes in each game depend on the net benefits obtained and the various costs borne by each party. Among these factors, transaction costs within the traceability system play a particularly critical role in shaping stakeholder behavior. The lower the transaction costs, the more likely stakeholders are to adopt strategies that support or enhance the functioning of the system. Therefore, reducing the operational and transaction costs of the traceability system should be a key policy focus for the government. This includes efforts in policy and regulatory development, platform and infrastructure construction, and the improvement of information exchange mechanisms to foster sustainable development in aquaculture.

With the increasing pressure of resource decline and environmental pollution faced by the green transformation of marine fisheries, marine fishery carbon sinks are an increasingly close link to national strategic interests and economic lifelines. It is, therefore, necessary to explore paths for the enhancement and development of the carbon sink capacity of marine fisheries. Based on the economic data of marine fisheries from 2002 to 2021, this paper measures the capacity and characteristics of marine fishery carbon sinks in provincial areas, applies the kernel density estimation method to depict the dynamic evolution of the distribution of absolute differences in marine fishery carbon sinks, and at the same time, identifies the factors influencing the spatial imbalance in the development of marine fishery carbon sinks as well as the spatial spillover effects. The results show the following: (1) From the total amount, the fishery carbon sink capacity of China’s three marine economic circles has fluctuated and increased over the past 20 years, with obvious differences among different circles, and the marine fishery carbon sink capacity of the eastern, northern, and southern marine economic circles has risen sequentially. This trend corresponds to the economic disparities among the three circles, demonstrating a transition from economic to industrial driving effects. (2) From the spatial point of view, the fishery carbon sink capacity shows a trend of increasing year by year, concentrating in the circles, and overflowing between the circles. (3) The results of a partial derivative test further show that among the main influencing factors of marine fishery carbon sinks, capital, labor, and market openness have direct positive effects on marine fishery carbon sinks, and the direct effect of innovation is the strongest, and the significance of the indirect effect of the three circles is weaker compared to the direct effect and total effect. As a result, the carbon sink of China’s marine fisheries has a large room for improvement, and in order to promote the high-quality development of China’s marine fisheries, it is still necessary to accelerate the circulation of resources within the marine economic circle, accelerate the research of fishery technology, actively develop the carbon sink fishery, and enhance the specialization of aquatic product processing.

The development of rural tourism presents the complexity of the industry, environment, governance, and coordination structure. In tourism development, due to the high dispersion and fragmentation of property rights of the resource objects themselves, as well as the involvement of many “atomic” property rights and other stakeholders, coupled with the lack of strong organization and leadership, the full development and utilization of rich tourism resources in rural areas is becoming problematic. It is difficult to realize the “rental value” of tourism resources, which leads to the tragedy of anti-commons. Taking the case of China, this paper explores the occurrence of anti-commons tragedy in the development of rural tourism, identifies the problems caused by the tragic governance of the anti-commons in the current environmental development, and further examines the governance path of the anti-commons tragedy in the tourism sector. The purpose of the study is to optimize the development environment of rural tourism and build a healthy space suitable for industry, residence, and tourism.

Individual aquaculture farmers in developing countries play an important role in ensuring food security. This study uses survey data from aquaculture households in Rongcheng and Xiangshan cities in China to explore the impact of cooperative participation on the benefits to the aquaculture households. The empirical results show that the participation of aquaculture farmers in cooperatives has effectively increased their net profit and output per unit area. On average, participating in cooperatives increased the net profit and output per unit area of farmers by approximately 15.55% and 11.47%, respectively. The test results of the mechanism show that the information services, technical training, and product sales guidance provided by the cooperatives have increased the net profit of the farmers. At the same time, the information services and product sales guidance provided by cooperatives are important reasons for the increase in the output per unit area.

Whether the land resource allocation method with Chinese characteristics can continue to play a positive role must be explored in the context of high-quality development. This study is based on the panel data of A-share listed non-financial insurance enterprises from 2006 to 2018. The proportion of industrial land area in urban construction land area to characterize land resource allocation methods and analyzes the effect of China’s land resource allocation methods on enterprise technological innovation. Results show that 1) the land resource allocation methods of the large-scale transfer of industrial land and the restricted transfer of commercial and residential land inhibit enterprises from technological innovation. 2) The inhibition is heterogeneous given the nature of the enterprise and the degrees of technology intensity and regional differences. The effect is greater on state-owned enterprises and those in high-tech industries and eastern cities. 3) The increase in corporate R&D expenditure and government subsidies weakens the negative effect of China’s land resource allocation method to a certain extent. This study maintains that the reform of land resource allocation methods should be promoted following local conditions, the role of the market should be fully utilized, and the subjective initiative of local governments should also be mobilized to promote the overall transformation of the economy and society to innovation-driven development effectively.