Search Results (411)

Environmental protection tax is levied based on various types of emitted pollutants and has a significant impact on the green behaviors and ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) performance of enterprises. This article explores the green effect and the impact of environmental protection tax on the green behavior of listed companies with in-depth empirical analysis based on the data of industrial enterprises listed on the A-shares from 2018 to 2022 in China. Research has found that the implementation of environmental protection tax has played a significant driving role in improving the overall performance level of corporate ESG, and this tax system has formed a driving force mechanism for enterprises to increase investment in green innovation and effectively improve their comprehensive ESG performance. Green innovation plays a significant intermediary role between environmental protection tax and corporate ESG performance. It is suggested that regions should adjust the applicable amount of environmental protection tax, increase green innovation, and standardize pollution control and emission reduction regulations. Full article

Malaria persists as a paradigmatic model of co-evolutionary complexity, emerging from the dynamic interplay among a human host, Anopheles vectors, and Plasmodium falciparum parasites. In human populations, centuries of selective pressures have sculpted an intricate and heterogeneous immunogenetic landscape. Classical adaptations, such as hemoglobinopathies, are complemented by a diverse array of genetic polymorphisms that modulate innate and adaptive immune responses. These genetic traits, along with the acquisition of functional immunity following repeated exposures, mitigate disease severity but are continually challenged by the parasite’s highly evolved mechanisms of antigenic variation and immunomodulation. Such host adaptations underscore an evolutionary arms race that perpetually shapes the clinical and epidemiological outcomes. Intermediaries in malaria transmission have evolved robust responses to both natural and anthropogenic pressures. Their vector competence is governed by complex polygenic traits that affect physiological barriers and immune responses during parasite development. Recent studies reveal that these mosquitoes exhibit rapid behavioral and biochemical adaptations, including shifts in host-seeking behavior and the evolution of insecticide resistance. Mechanisms such as enhanced metabolic detoxification and target site insensitivity have emerged in response to the widespread use of insecticides, thereby eroding the efficacy of conventional interventions like insecticide-treated bed nets and indoor residual spraying. These adaptations not only sustain transmission dynamics in intervention saturated landscapes but also challenge current vector control paradigms, necessitating the development of innovative, integrated management strategies. At the molecular level, P. falciparum exemplifies evolutionary ingenuity through extensive genomic streamlining and metabolic reconfiguration. Its compact genome, a result of strategic gene loss and pruning, is optimized for an obligate parasitic lifestyle. The repurposing of the apicoplast for critical anabolic functions including fatty acid, isoprenoid, and haem biosynthesis highlights the parasite’s ability to exploit host derived nutrients efficiently. Moreover, the rapid accumulation of mutations, coupled with an elaborate repertoire for antigenic switching and epigenetic regulation, not only facilitates immune escape but also accelerates the emergence of antimalarial drug resistance. Advanced high throughput sequencing and functional genomics have begun to elucidate the metabolic epigenetic nexus that governs virulence gene expression and antigenic diversity in P. falciparum. By integrating insights from molecular biology, genomics, and evolutionary ecology, this study delineates the multifaceted co-adaptive dynamics that render malaria a recalcitrant global health threat. Our findings provide critical insights into the molecular arms race at the heart of host–pathogen vector interactions and underscore promising avenues for the development of next generation therapeutic and vector management strategies aimed at sustainable malaria elimination. Full article

Against the backdrop of stricter global carbon emission policies, corporate green transition performance has become a key driver for advancing sustainable development. Based on data from A-share listed companies in China from 2015 to 2022, this study empirically examines the mechanisms by which digital transformation impacts corporate green transformation performance. The findings reveal that (1) Digital transformation significantly promotes corporate green transformation, with supply chain innovation serving as a critical mediating factor; (2) The environmental awareness of senior executives and the strategic proactiveness of enterprises exert a significant moderating effect on this relationship. Enhanced environmental awareness among executives drives enterprises to leverage digital tools for green transformation; conversely, excessive strategic proactiveness exerts a constraining influenc; (3) Heterogeneity analysis indicates that firm-specific characteristics, industry attributes, and regional disparities produce differentiated effects. State-owned enterprises, benefiting from their policy support and resource advantages, are more likely to advance green innovation through enterprise digital transformation. Non-high-tech industries tend to optimize production processes, control pollution, and improve operational efficiency through digitalization. Moreover, in regions with stringent environmental regulations, the positive impact of digitalization on both innovation performance and environmental outcomes becomes particularly pronounced. This study enriches theoretical understanding of the integration between digitalization and greening, and by uncovering the pivotal role of supply chain innovation provides practical guidance and policy insights for enterprises advancing sustainable development. Full article

China’s urbanization has witnessed a significant influx of people pursuing better economic prospects. However, as digitization becomes increasingly integrated into urban living, it raises the bar for migrants’ digital literacy, and creates adaptation challenges for rural migrants. Despite a few pieces of literature having analyzed how micro-level economic and social characteristics of rural migrants affect their urban living quality in inflow areas, few studies have examined the influencing factors of migrants’ urban living quality from the perspective of digitization level of the inflow areas, which is a nonnegligible environmental factors in modern China. Based on the data of China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS), this paper empirically examines how urban financial digitization in inflows affects rural migrants’ urban living quality. The impact of financial digitalization on urban living quality of rural migrants presents a significantly positive “U” shape. That is, with the improvement of financial digitalization, rural migrants’ urban living quality in inflow areas would first decline and then increase. The mechanism study shows that the financial digitization affects rural migrants’ living quality through urban settlement intention as intermediary variable. Furthermore, heterogeneity across education attainment, migration scope and duration were investigated. The results of the study provide empirical evidence on how to make rural migrants obtain better life experience with the development of urban digitization. Full article

Under the background of global green sustainable development and the urgent need to understand complex regional innovation systems, it is crucial to scientifically assess China’s Tourism Green Innovation Efficiency (TGIE) as a dynamic networked system and reveal its system-level evolution driving mechanism. This article presents the construction of the TGIE evaluation indicator system, measures the inter-provincial TGIE in China in 2011–2023 based on the three-stage super-efficiency SBM-DEA model, analyzes the spatial correlation network characteristics of TGIE by using the motif analysis method and the social network analysis method, and explores the evolutionary driving mechanism by using the time-exponential random graph model (TERGM). The study shows the following: (1) The TGIE of China exhibits a regional distribution pattern characterized by “high in the east and low in the west.” The efficiency of the eastern coastal region is significantly higher than that of the central and western regions, and the overall efficiency shows a fluctuating upward trend. (2) The local structure of China’s TGIE network is dominated by the chain structure, and the partially closed structure is gradually enhanced. It indicates that the bridge role of intermediary nodes in the cross-regional flow of innovation resources is becoming more and more significant. (3) The overall network evolves from a single center to a polycentric collaboration model. High-efficiency regions attract low-efficiency regions to collaborate through high connectivity, and intermediary nodes play a key role in connecting high- and low-efficiency regions. (4) The evolution of China’s TGIE network is driven by both exogenous and endogenous dynamics, showing significant path dependence and path creation characteristics. This study enhances the theoretical framework of complex systems in tourism innovation and offers theoretical support and policy insights for optimizing the network structure of China’s TGIE as a complex adaptive system and maximizing regional cooperation networks. Full article

Environmental pollutants such as heavy metals, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, microplastics, and airborne particulates are increasingly recognized for their potential to influence immune function through epigenetic mechanisms. This review examines conserved pollutant-associated pathways at interfaces of immunity and epigenetics, with particular attention to Toll-like receptor–NF-κB signalling, NLRP3 inflammasome activity, and reactive oxygen species-driven cascades. Evidence from cellular, animal, and epidemiological studies indicates that these pathways may converge on chromatin regulators such as DNA methyltransferases, histone deacetylases, and EZH2, leading to DNA methylation shifts, histone modifications, and altered chromatin accessibility. Pollutants are also reported to modulate non-coding RNAs, including miR-21, miR-155, and several lncRNAs, which can act as intermediaries between cytokine signalling and epigenetic remodelling. Findings from transgenerational models suggest that pollutant-linked immune–epigenetic alterations might persist across generations, raising the possibility of long-term consequences for immune and neurodevelopmental health. Comparative analyses further indicate convergence across diverse pollutant classes, pointing to a shared mechanistic axis of immune–epigenetic disruption. Overall, these insights suggest that pollutant-induced immune–epigenetic signatures may contribute to inflammation, altered immune responses, and heritable disease risks, and their clarification could inform biomarker discovery and future precision approaches in immunotoxicology. Full article

Against the backdrop of pervasive land fragmentation and high transaction costs, organized land transfer has emerged as a growing trend in China’s agricultural land market, facilitating the transition toward moderate-scale farming. Based on survey data from 1472 households across 72 villages in Jiangsu Province, this study investigates the impact of organized land transfer on agricultural land allocation efficiency and explores the underlying mechanisms. The results show that organized land transfer significantly enhances agricultural land allocation efficiency. This finding proves to be robust across a series of robustness analyses. Specifically, organized land transfer enhances land allocation efficiency, primarily by enhancing transfer stability, expanding the transfer scale, and broadening the transfer scope. Moreover, our analysis of moderating factors reveals that the strength of the village collective economy positively moderates the relationship between organized land transfer and efficiency, whereas lineage networks exert a negative moderating influence. Addressing equity implications, this study also examines the model’s impact on farmers’ autonomy. The findings indicate that organized land transfer significantly suppresses transfer willingness, particularly in those with low incomes and the elderly. These results carry significant policy implications: when promoting organized land transfer, it is crucial to balance the strengthening of village collectives’ intermediary role with robust regulatory frameworks designed to safeguard farmers’ land rights and autonomy. Full article

The digital economy has become an important aspect of global competition and a key force in restructuring global factor resources, reshaping economic structures, and changing the landscape of global competition. This paper defines the concept of urban living environment, analyzes the mechanisms through which the digital economy affects it, and empirically examines the effects and transmission mechanisms of the digital economy in enhancing urban living environments based on panel data from 30 Chinese provinces from 2012 to 2022. The study finds that the accelerated development of the digital economy significantly contributes to improvements in urban living environments. Specifically, the digital economy exerts its positive influence through the intermediary paths of technological innovation, government governance, and changes in resident behavior. Moreover, its effect is more pronounced in provinces with lower investment in industrial pollution control and relatively lax environmental regulations. From a regional perspective, the digital economy has a greater impact on improving urban living environments in the eastern region than in the central and western regions. Full article

This paper selects 50 listed commercial banks in China from 2012 to 2023 as research samples, and employs the fixed effects model and Hansen’s threshold regression method to systematically examine the impact mechanism and non-linear characteristics of FinTech development on the profitability of commercial banks. The key findings are summarized as follows: (1) FinTech significantly undermines the overall profitability of commercial banks by reshaping the competitive landscape of the industry and intensifying the technology substitution effect. This is primarily reflected in the reduction in traditional interest income and the erosion of market share in intermediary business. (2) Heterogeneity analysis indicates that large state-owned banks and joint-stock banks experience more pronounced negative impacts compared to small and medium-sized banks. (3) Additional research findings reveal a significant single-threshold effect between FinTech and bank profitability, with a critical value of 4.169. When the development level of FinTech surpasses this threshold, its inhibitory effect diminishes substantially, suggesting that after achieving a certain degree of technological integration, commercial banks may partially alleviate external competitive pressures through synergistic effects. This study offers crucial empirical evidence and theoretical support for commercial banks to develop differentiated technology strategies and for regulatory authorities to design dynamically adaptable policy frameworks. Full article

This study explores the transformative potential of blockchain technology in overhauling conventional housing rental systems. It specifically addresses persistent issues, such as information asymmetry, fraudulent listings, weak Rental Agreements, and data breaches. A comprehensive review of ten academic publications highlights the architectural frameworks, underlying technologies, and myriad benefits of decentralized rental platforms. The intrinsic characteristics of blockchain—immutability, transparency, and decentralization—are pivotal in enhancing the credibility of rental information and proactively preventing fraudulent activities. Smart contracts emerge as a key innovation, enabling the automated execution of Rental Agreements, thereby significantly boosting efficiency and minimizing reliance on intermediaries. Furthermore, Decentralized Identity (DID) solutions offer a robust mechanism for securely managing identities, effectively mitigating risks associated with data leakage, and fostering a more trustworthy environment. The suitability of platforms such as Hyperledger Fabric for developing such sophisticated rental systems is also critically evaluated. Blockchain-based systems promise to dramatically increase market transparency, bolster transaction security, and enhance fraud prevention. They also offer streamlined processes for dispute resolution. Despite these significant advantages, the widespread adoption of blockchain in the rental sector faces several challenges. These include inherent technological complexity, adoption barriers, the need for extensive legal and regulatory adaptation, and critical privacy concerns (e.g., ensuring compliance with GDPR). Furthermore, blockchain scalability limitations and the intricate balance between data immutability and the necessity for occasional data corrections present considerable hurdles. Future research should focus on developing user-friendly DID solutions, enhancing blockchain performance and cost-efficiency, strengthening smart contract security, optimizing the overall user experience, and exploring seamless integration with emerging technologies. While current challenges are undeniable, blockchain technology offers a powerful suite of tools for fundamentally improving the rental market’s efficiency, transparency, and security, exhibiting significant potential to reshape the entire rental ecosystem. Full article

Studying the impact of digital economy development on marine environmental quality has important theoretical and practical significance for achieving a win–win situation between high-quality economic development and high-level ecological environment protection. This article selects the marine environment of coastal provinces and cities in China from 2011 to 2022 as the research object and uses the entropy method to comprehensively evaluate the quality of marine environment and the level of digital economy. Also, we construct intermediary and threshold effect models to deeply explore the impact mechanism of digital economy development on marine environmental quality. We find that digital economy and marine environmental quality both show a wave-like rising trend, but the comprehensive level is relatively low. The development of the digital economy can effectively improve the level of marine environmental quality, and the digital economy promotes the improvement of marine environmental quality by improving the level of marine economy. The level of economic development and industrial scale has created a threshold effect in the process of promoting the development of marine environmental quality through the digital economy. Therefore, strengthening the digital governance of the marine environment and promoting the industrialization of marine ecology and the ecologicalization of marine industries will help promote the integrated development of the digital economy and marine environment. Full article

Strengthening climate resilience constitutes a foundational approach through which cities adapt to climate change and mitigate associated environmental risks. However, research on the influence of economic policy environments on climate resilience remains limited. Guided by institutional theory and dynamic capability theory, this study employs a panel dataset comprising 272 Chinese cities at the prefecture level and above, covering the period from 2009 to 2023. It constructs a composite index framework for evaluating the green business environment (GBE) and urban climate resilience (UCR) using the entropy weight method. Employing a two-way fixed-effect regression model, it examined the impact of GBE optimization on UCR empirically and also explored the underlying mechanisms. The results show that improvements in the GBE significantly enhance UCR, with green innovation (GI) in technology functioning as an intermediary mechanism within this relationship. Moreover, climate policy uncertainty (CPU) exerts a moderating effect along this transmission pathway: on the one hand, it amplifies the beneficial effect of the GBE on GI; on the other hand, it hampers the transformation of GI into improved GBEs. The former effect dominates, indicating that optimizing the GBE becomes particularly critical for enhancing UCR under high CPU. To eliminate potential endogenous issues, this paper adopts a two-stage regression model based on the instrumental variable method (2SLS). The above conclusion still holds after undergoing a series of robustness tests. This study reveals the mechanism by which a GBE enhances its growth through GI. By incorporating CPU as a heterogeneous factor, the findings suggest that governments should balance policy incentives with environmental regulations in climate resilience governance. Furthermore, maintaining awareness of the risks stemming from climate policy volatility is of critical importance. By providing a stable and supportive institutional environment, governments can foster steady progress in green innovation and comprehensively improve urban adaptive capacity to climate change. Full article

The port logistics service innovation (PLSI) is closely associated with cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) enterprise performance, given that the port, as the spatial carrier and the joint point of goods, information, customs house affairs, etc., is essentially a key node of the CBEC logistics chain. However, the influence mechanism of PLSI on CBEC enterprise performance has still not yet been elaborated by consensus. To fill this gap, this study aims to figure out the effect mechanism integrating the probe into two variables (i.e., information interaction and environmental upgrade) in a moderated mediation model. Specifically, this study collects questionnaire survey data of logistics enterprises and CBEC enterprises in the Ningbo-Zhoushan Port of China by the Bootstrap method in the software SPSS 26.0. The results show the following: (1) PLSI can positively affect the CBEC enterprise performance; (2) information interaction plays an intermediary role between PLSI and CBEC enterprise performance; and (3) environmental upgrade can not only positively regulate the relationship between information interaction and CBEC enterprise performance, but also enhance the mediating role of information interaction with a moderated intermediary effect. Full article

As an important direction in industrial evolution, the synergistic agglomeration of manufacturing and productive service industries has become a key path to promote the green transformation of the economy. Based on China’s provincial panel data, this study utilizes a variety of econometric methods to explore in depth the mechanisms, spatial effects and regional differences in the impact of the synergistic agglomeration of manufacturing and productive service industries on the green, low-carbon and recycling development of the economy. The empirical results show that the synergistic agglomeration of manufacturing and productive services not only directly promotes the green, low-carbon and recycling development of the economy, but also generates an indirect impact through the intermediary channel and exhibits significant spillover characteristics in the spatial dimension. This conclusion holds firm after a series of robustness tests. In addition, environmental regulations and the level of regional industrialization play a moderating role on the impact of industrial synergistic agglomeration and green, low-carbon and recycling development of the economy, and the effect of the role varies across regions and levels of economic development. This paper provides a decision-making reference for further optimizing the regional layout of China’s industries and enhancing the green, low-carbon and recycling development of the economy in each province. Full article

Ground temperature (GT) variation significantly affects the energy performance of ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems. Both long-term thermal accumulation and short-term dynamic responses contribute to the degradation of the coefficient of performance (COP), especially under cooling-dominated conditions. This study develops a mechanism-based TRNSYS simulation that integrates building loads, subsurface heat transfer, and dynamic heat pump operation. A 20-year case study in Shanghai reveals long-term performance degradation driven by thermal boundary shifts. Results show that GT increases by over 12 °C during the simulation period, accompanied by a progressive increase in ΔT by approximately 0.20 K and a consistent decline in COP. A near-linear inverse relationship is observed, with COP decreasing by approximately 0.038 for every 1 °C increase in GT. In addition, ΔT is identified as a key intermediary linking subsurface thermal disturbance to efficiency loss. A multi-scale response framework is established to capture both annual degradation and daily operational shifts along the Load–GT–ΔT–COP pathway. This study provides a quantitative explanation of the thermal degradation process and offers theoretical guidance for performance forecasting, operational threshold design, and thermal regulation in GSHP systems. Full article