Influencing Factors of Decision-Making Mechanism of Environmental Sustainability in Chinese Cities
HAI Jun-jiao1, XIN Xiao-rui2, ZENG Gang1
1.The Center of Modern Chinese City Studies, Institute of Urban Development, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China; 2.School of Economics, Zhengjiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou 310018, China
Abstract:
Through literature review, this paper establishes the theoretical analysis framework for China’s urban sustainable development from four perspectives: Upper level policy orientation, base level desires for environmental protection, environment pressure and economic feasibility. Through content analysis of annual work report of local municipal governments, this paper identifies the willingness of local governments for sustainable development and sets up a theoretical framework in terms of 7 key performance indicators, and quantitatively analyzes the motivation mechanism of the decision-making of sustainable development environment in urban China at prefecture levels and above. The results show that the driving force of sustainable development in Chinese cities mainly originate from higher level of the government, whose macro strategy forms the core for the transformation towards sustainable development. The desires for sustainable development in grass-root public are not yet sufficient to motivate local government to autonomously implement and execute sustainable development strategies. In addition, the severe environmental problems have already caught great attention and prompted actions from local governments. However, municipal governments still regards sustainable development as a re-distributive policy to a large extent and the awareness or conditions for pursuing economic welfare through environmental governance are not yet mature.
HAI Jun-jiao, XIN Xiao-rui, ZENG Gang.Influencing Factors of Decision-Making Mechanism of Environmental Sustainability in Chinese Cities[J] Economic Survey, 2018,V35(3): 16-22