Impacts of Cultural Diversity on Carbon Emission Effects: From the Perspective of Environmental Regulations

• Main Authors: Ying-jie Song, Fu-wei Ma, Jing-ya Qu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-08-01
• Series: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
• Subjects: cultural diversity; environmental regulation; environmental preference; carbon emission effect
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/17/6109

Cultural diversity is an issue not considered too often in traditional research on the influencing factors of carbon emission reduction to give full play to the effective participation of micro subjects in environmental regulation and to achieve the carbon emission reduction target. Aiming at the cultural diversity of micro subjects, this paper introduces the provincial dynamic index of cultural diversity and, from the perspective of environmental regulation, combines environmental regulation types such as energy regulation, economic regulation, and administrative regulation, to empirically study the impact of cultural difference on carbon emission reduction. We found that cultural diversity had a significant negative impact on carbon emission effects, and there is a one-way Granger causality between the two. Cultural diversity and environmental regulations exerted a synergistic impact on carbon emission effects. Through specific mechanism tests, the intermediary effect of environmental regulations was confirmed. Cultural diversity influenced carbon emission effects through the mediation of environmental regulations. From the perspective of the refined characteristics of different regions, possible cultural diversity in the southern region and regional energy consumption characteristics significantly affected carbon emission effects. On the basis of the conclusions reached in this empirical research, we put forward the following policy suggestions: emphasis should be placed on the function of culture and other non-institutional factors in the practice of environmental regulations; bottom-up environmental protection incentives must be strengthened, and required expression channels should be perfected; the role of various environmental regulations must be given full play in the process of carbon emission reduction.