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Whether foreign direct investment can promote high-quality economic development under environmental regulation: evidence from the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

Environmental Science and Pollution Research volume 28, pages 21674–21683 (2021)Cite this article

Abstract

Based on the development concepts of “innovation, coordination, green, opening and sharing,” a high-quality economic evaluation index system is constructed using city-level data in Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), China. Further, the spatial lag model is used to empirically study the effects of environmental regulation, foreign direct investment, and its interaction term on the high-quality economic development. The results show that environmental regulation is conducive to promoting high-quality economic development, which provides a certain empirical basis for the Porter Hypothesis. In addition, foreign direct investment also plays a significant positive role. Specifically, environmental regulation has positive impacts on the relationship between foreign direct investment and the high-quality economic development. Finally, this paper puts forward some countermeasures and suggestions, such as improving environmental regulation policy and actively introducing high-quality foreign direct investment.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 71874149, 71934001, 71873001, and 71904162) and National Social Science Fund of China (grant number 20ZDA084).

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Affiliations

  1. School of Statistics and Applied Mathematics, Anhui University of Finance and Economics, Bengbu, 233030, China

    Xiaosheng Li & Yuling Lu

  2. China Center for Energy Economics Research, School of Economics, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Ruting Huang

Authors
  1. Xiaosheng Li
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  2. Yuling Lu
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  3. Ruting Huang
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Contributions

Conceptualization, supervision, and writing were performed by Xiaosheng Li. Data curation and methodology were conducted by Yuling Lu. Ruting Huang was actively involved in the study design and revision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ruting Huang.

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Li, X., Lu, Y. & Huang, R. Whether foreign direct investment can promote high-quality economic development under environmental regulation: evidence from the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 21674–21683 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-12032-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-12032-z

Keywords

  • Environmental regulation
  • Foreign direct investment
  • High-quality economic development
  • Yangtze River Economic Belt