Livelihood Diversification and Residents' Welfare: Evidence from Maasai Mara National Reserve.

The contradiction between environmental protection and livelihood development is becoming increasingly serious for most protected areas in developing countries. Livelihood diversification is an efficient way to increase household income to alleviate poverty related to environmental protection. However, its impacts on household welfare in protected areas have rarely been quantitatively explored.

Is air pollution detrimental to regional innovation? An empirical heterogeneity test based on Chinese cities.

Nowadays, innovation seems to be the inevitable choice to achieve stable economic growth. However, the negative impact of air pollution on health and economy makes air pollution an important factor in regional innovation, which deserves our discussion. The overall regional innovation level from 2014 to 2019 has an upward trend, while the overall air pollution has a downward trend during the period, which provides foundation for our research.

Heterogeneous Effects of Skill Training on Rural Livelihoods around Four Biosphere Reserves in China.

The growing contradiction between protection and livelihood is a common challenge for most protected areas in developing countries. Skill training is an important way to increase household income and alleviate the dilemma between conservation and development. However, its effects on household income around protected areas have rarely been explored.

The Relationship Between Enterprise Financial Risk and R&D Investment Under the Influence of the COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a considerable blow to the development of Chinese enterprises. Therefore, exploring how to reduce the enterprise financial risk under the impact of the COVID-19 has become a current research hotspot. We select the data of 3,098 A-share companies in the quarters of 2019 and 2020, use the Z-score model to reasonably evaluate enterprise financial risk, and analyze the impact of Research and Development (R&D) investment on enterprise financial risk under the COVID-19.

Assessing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on China's TFP growth: Evidence from region-level data in 2020.

This paper examines the first wave spread of COVID-19 in China and its impact on TFP growth for 2020, and assess the role of anti-epidemic lockdown policy in suppressing the pandemic. Methodologically, we systematically quantify the disparity in the pandemic's productivity impact and the role of lockdown policies across regions, by combining the prefecture-level TFP growth for 422 regions (including 276 municipal cites and 146 county regions) with the daily statistics on the pandemic. Our results show that the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on TFP growth are more likely to occur in municipal cities, compared to rural areas.

The Impact of Digital Economy on the Economic Growth and the Development Strategies in the post-COVID-19 Era: Evidence From Countries Along the "Belt and Road".

The digital economy is considered as an effective measure to mitigate the negative economic impact of the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic. However, few studies evaluated the role of digital economy on the economic growth of countries along the "Belt and Road" and the impact of COVID-19 on their digital industries. This study constructed a comprehensive evaluation index system and applied a panel data regression model to empirically analyze the impact of digital economy on the economic growth of countries along the "Belt and Road" before COVID-19.

The Configuration of Incentives in Small and Medium-Sized Content Platform Enterprises Under the Normalization of COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the advantages of online knowledge communities with cross-space, time, interpersonal, and other characteristics fully demonstrated. Exploring the configurations of platform incentives to improve knowledge collaboration performance can provide a reference for the efficient and sustainable development of the platforms under the normalization of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the help of the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method, taking the social Q&A platform enterprises as an example, this study analyzed the configurations of platform incentives for the high knowledge collaborative performance from the dimensions of market incentives and social incentives, and the heterogeneity of knowledge capital appreciation and social capital appreciation is also discussed.

Planetary Boundaries for Forests and Their National Exceedance.

Achieving forest sustainability is a declared sustainable development goal (SDG 15). Measuring the safe operating space─planetary boundaries─of global forests is essential to determine global forest pressure and manage forests sustainably. Here, we quantify the forestry planetary boundary (FPB) and national forestry boundaries.

Does the joint prevention and control regulation improve the air quality? A quasi-experiment in the Beijing economic belt during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study aims to clarify the correlation between air pollution of cities in Beijing Economic Belt from a time-varying perspective and estimate effects of joint prevention and control regulation of air pollution. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity. Based on daily data of air quality, we used TVP-VAR model and utilize the pandemic as a quasi-experiment to assess the policies.

The Dynamic Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Air Quality: The Beijing Lessons.

Air pollution is one of the major environmental problems that endanger human health. The COVID-19 pandemic provided an excellent opportunity to investigate the possible methods to improve Beijing's air quality meanwhile considering Beijing's economic impact. We used the TVP-VAR model to analyze the dynamic relationship among the pandemic, economy and air quality based on the daily data from 1 January to 30 August 2020.

Does Environmental Regulation Improve the Green Total Factor Productivity of Chinese Cities? A Threshold Effect Analysis Based on the Economic Development Level.

Improvement of green total factor productivity (GTFP) through environmental regulation is of great practical significance in promoting the high-quality development of urban economies. Based on panel data for 163 cities in China from 2003 to 2016, five indicators were selected to quantify the effects of environmental regulation: the SO removal rate, smoke and dust removal rate, solid waste utilization rate, domestic sewage treatment rate, and waste harmless treatment rate. This study evaluated the impact of environmental regulation on urban GTFP, and analyzed the threshold effect of urban economic development levels.

Pollution haven or halo? The role of the energy transition in the impact of FDI on SO2 emissions.

This paper explores how the relationship between FDI and SO2 emissions has been affected by the energy transition. We applied a semi-parametric method to a STIRPAT model using Chinese provincial panel data from 2002 to 2016 to conduct an empirical analysis of FDI and SO2 emissions and analyze the effects of FDI on the energy transition. We found that FDI and SO2 emissions are characterized by an inverted U-shaped relationship; FDI and coal consumption have an inverted U-shaped relationship, and FDI and natural gas consumption have a U-shaped relationship.