ORIGINAL RESEARCH
The Impact of Environmental Regulation
on Logistics Efficiency along the Yangtze River
Economic Belt
More details
Hide details
1
College of Business Administration, Fujian Jiangxia University, Fuzhou, China
2
School of Economics and Management, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China
Submission date: 2023-03-28
Final revision date: 2023-05-12
Acceptance date: 2023-06-13
Online publication date: 2023-07-24
Publication date: 2023-08-11
Corresponding author
Lu Chen
School of Economics and Management, Fuzhou University, Xue Yuan Road No.2, 350108, Fuzhou, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2023;32(5):3971-3987
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
With the Chinese government promoting the “Double Carbon” policy and high-economic
development, environmental regulation and economic efficiency research has become a hot topic.
However, existing research focuses on industrial economic efficiency, ignoring logistics industry, which
has high emissions and energy consumption. Based on provincial panel data from China’s Yangtze River
Economic Belt from 2009 to 2020, this paper uses a super-SBM, which includes undesirable outputs and
is combined with the Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) index, to measure and analyze the regional
logistics efficiency. Panel regression and threshold regression models are used to test the impact of
formal and informal environmental regulations on logistics efficiency, rather than the common single
perspective. The results indicate that: (1) Environmental regulation has a significant impact on the overall
logistics efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt during the study period, and there is a problem
of regional development incongruity. The maximum difference in logistics efficiency between provinces
is 0.5637. (2) The impact mechanism of formal and informal environmental regulations differs, and each
percentage of informal environmental regulation has a promotion effect on logistics efficiency that is
0.0827% higher than that of formal environmental regulation. (3) Formal environmental regulation has
a single threshold effect on logistics efficiency, whereas informal environmental regulation has a double
threshold effect, demonstrating that overregulation can have the opposite effect. Based on different
regulatory tools, this paper makes pertinent recommendations to promote the coordinated development
of the logistics industry’s economic and environmental benefits in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.