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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Pollution
Volume 11 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1454242
The Impact of Public Environmental Concerns on Port Sustainability: Evidence from 44 port cities in China
Provisionally accepted- Chongqing Jiaotong University, Nan'an District, China
Abstract:Port construction and operations significantly impact the surrounding environment, creating an urgent need to explore pathways for enhancing port sustainability. Public environmental concern plays a vital role in driving environmental governance and offers new directions for improving port sustainability. Using panel data from 44 coastal ports and their respective cities between 2010 and 2021, this study empirically analyzes the impact of public environmental concern on port sustainability and its underlying mechanisms. Additionally, we examine how this impact varies across different city samples. The baseline regression results demonstrate that public environmental concern has a significant positive impact on port sustainability. This finding remains robust after a series of robustness checks and addressing endogeneity issues. Mechanism analysis reveals that public environmental concern can enhance port sustainability by increasing local government environmental investments. Furthermore, the development of digital infrastructure can amplify the positive effect of public environmental concern on port sustainability. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the positive impact of public environmental concern on port sustainability is stronger in cities with lower government environmental regulation intensity, lower pollution emissions, higher education levels, and greater transparency in environmental information disclosure.
Keywords: Port sustainability, Public environmental concern, environmental governance, Government environmental investments, Digital infrastructure
Received: 25 Jun 2024; Accepted: 10 Dec 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 S, Feng, Nie and Ren. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Zhitao Feng, Chongqing Jiaotong University, Nan'an District, China
Jiayun Nie, Chongqing Jiaotong University, Nan'an District, China
Xiaohong Ren, Chongqing Jiaotong University, Nan'an District, China
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