Investigating the improvement of coordinated multi-agent eco-environmental governance within China’s green development strategy

China has created a world-renowned miracle of economic and social development, however has simultaneously caused seriously damage to the eco-environment. While the Chinese government has increased its investment in eco-environmental governance in recent years, the results have been less successful than the expectations, hence, the Chinese government has been actively exploring innovations in governance models. At the 19th Communist Party of China National Congress, the Chinese government explicitly proposed a new paradigm of eco-environmental governance, in which multiple agencies coordinate in order to change the dilemma of high input and low output in eco-environmental governance under the traditional one-dimensional environmental control model. Additionally, China has proposed a future green development strategy expected to achieve green modernisation by 2050. This strategy proposes new requirements for eco-environmental governance, such as pollution and emission reduction, low-carbon and cycle-used, and economic-social-environmental green transformation. The traditional eco-environmental governance model is incompatible with the new requirements of eco-environmental governance within China’s green development strategy due to the disadvantages of single governance objectives and backward governance methodologies. Thus, an important management issue currently affecting China is the development of a coordinated model of eco-environment governance within China’s green development strategy. This thesis seeks to explore the improvement of the level of coordinated multi-agent eco-environmental governance within China’s green development strategy (CMEG-GDS). For the purposes of this research, the main agents of eco-environmental governance to be considered are the central government, local governments, enterprises, and the public. This is examined by assessing the main elements of these multiagency collaborations; within the governmental coordination between central and local governments, within the local government, enterprise, and public coordinated governance outside of the governmental organisation, and finally within the central and local governments, enterprise, and public coordinated governance. 

This research initially defines the related concepts of CMEG-GDS. Next, this thesis clarifies the multiple behavioural logicss behind the eco-environmental governance of the central government, local government, enterprises, and the public, which paves the way for constructing a multi-logic framework to analyse the CMEG-GDS in this study. 

Following this, the research evaluates the CMEG-GDS. To accomplish this, a related evaluation indicator system was constructed, and the data envelopment analysis model of the nested leader-follow game network was improved. This approach sought to evaluate the ecoenvironmental governance level within China’s green development strategy of the central government, local government, enterprise, and the public. The coupled coordination model was then used estimate the evaluation results of the central and local governments coordinated governance level, the local government, enterprise and public coordinated governance level, and the central and local governments, enterprise, and public coordinated governance level of eco-environment within China’s green development strategy, which provides the dependent variable for the following chapters. The results indicated that these three types of coordinated governance levels have a positive trend, but still require further improvement. Furthermore, the four agents had a relatively equal level of eco environmental governance which suggests that the low eco-environmental governance level of any single agent is not the primary cause of the inadequate coordinated governance level. Consequently, the improvement of CMEGGDS should not be limited to a single agent, but instead should promote the joint development of multi-agent, so as to improve CMEG-GDS.  

This thesis next examines how to enhance the level of central-local governments coordinated eco-environmental governance within China’s green development strategy (CCLEG-GDS). This thesis examines the effects of environmental decentralisation, fiscal decentralisation, and the interaction between environmental decentralisation and fiscal decentralisation on the CCLEG-GDS. The results indicate that environmental decentralisation has a significant and negative impact on the CCLEG-GDS. Furthermore, environmental monitoring decentralisation and environmental supervision decentralisation both showed a statistically significant negative effect. Additionally, the environmental administration decentralisation had a negative, albeit insignificant influence. Fiscal decentralization shows a significant threshold effect on the CCLEG-GDS, which was positive initially but then became negative after passing a threshold. The interaction between environmental decentralisation and fiscal decentralisation had an insignificant negative impact on the CCLEG-GDS during the research period. These findings provide policy implications to enhance CCLEG-GDS.

Furthermore, this thesis aims to explore how to enhance the level of coordinated local government-enterprise-public eco-environmental governance within China’s green development strategy (LEPE-GDS). Through multi-logical analysis, the research suggests three influencing factors, namely technological innovation, marketisation, and corruption, that affect the local government-enterprise-public coordinated process of eco-environment governance within China’s green development strategy. The results show that technological innovation and marketisation have significant, positive effects on the LEPE-GDS. In contrast, corruption is found to have a negative, statistically significant effect on it. Furthermore, technological innovation is shown to have a moderating effect on the relationship between marketisation and LEPE-GDS, which is proven to be significant and positive. This moderating effect further reinforces the total positive effect of marketisation, thus confirming that technological innovation has a significant and positive effect on LEPE-GDS. In addition, technological innovation has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between corruption and LEPE-GDS, however the effect is insignificant during the research period. Based on these results, policy implications are proposed to help improve LEPE-GDS.

Finally, this thesis investigates how to improve the level of coordinated central-local governments-enterprise-public eco-environmental governance within China’s green development strategy (CLEPE-GDS). It discusses the interaction of central-local government- enterprise-public coordinated governance of eco-environment within China’s green development strategy. This exploration then analyses the constituent elements and operation process of the improvement mechanism of CLEPE-GDS. To further gain experience and understanding on how to improve the CLEPE-GDS, a comparative analysis of two cases is conducted, and the corresponding policy implications are put forward. This provides a reference for the organic combination of the internal and external partial interaction mechanisms of the governmental organisation through institutional arrangements to maximise the coordinated force of multi-agent.

In summary, this thesis analyses the differences in behavioural logics of multi-agent between the coordinated governance of eco-environment within China’s green development strategy and that of traditional eco-environmental governance. Additionally, this thesis examines the improvement of the CMEG-GDS from the three perspectives. The research results are of great significance for comprehensively analysing the important factors and influencing mechanisms that affect the improvement of the CMEG-GDS. Accordingly, policy implications are proposed, which is beneficial in directing social practices.