Different types of environmental regulations and carbon intensity: empirical analysis of China’s garment industry

Abstract

Environmental regulation is an important tool to mitigate carbon emissions. To explore the relationships between different types of environmental regulations and carbon intensity (CI) of China’s garment industry, this paper uses multiple econometric models to study the effects of command-and-control environmental regulation (CER), market-incentive environmental regulation (MER) and public-participation environmental regulation (PER) the carbon intensity of China’s garment industry and analyses their regional heterogeneity. The results show that at the national level, both CER and MER have a green paradox effect on CI of China’s garment industry, while the effect of PER is not significant. At regional level, in the eastern garment industry the influence of CER on CI is dominated by the forced emission reduction effect, while MER pushes up the emission intensity within a certain range. Increasing PER helps to reduce the CI of western and North-eastern garment industry. The potential for implications from the results and policy recommendations are also discussed.