ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Policy and Governance
This article is part of the Research TopicESG as a Driver of Organizational and Social Development: Opportunities, Investments, Performance and ChallengesView all 5 articles
How Does Government Regulation Promote Environmental Performance :A Configurational Effects Perspective on "Politics-Administration-Rule of law" Perspective
Provisionally accepted
- Guangdong University of Finance & Economics, Guangzhou, China
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Against the backdrop of environmental crises, countries worldwide are striving to curb ecosystem degradation. Existing studies focus on economic and technological solutions, but few studies specifically discussing the government regulatory behavior, especially the combined effect of multiple policy instruments within the system. This study investigates the interactive effects of different policy tools on environmental performance from a configurational perspective, explores pluralistic pathways for environmental governance, and examines the evolution and spatial variation of these pathways. Using panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2010 to 2020, the analysis reveals seven synergistic instrument pathways that enhance environmental performance. These pathways demonstrate strong explanatory power across different periods, indicating their effectiveness and stability. Moreover, distinct types of regions exhibit clear preferences for specific environmental regulation pathways. This study sharpens our understanding of how government regulation shapes environmental performance from the perspective of configuration theory, elucidates the interaction mechanisms among environmental policy instruments, and maps alternative differentiated pathways for state-led environmental governance. The findings offer valuable insights for cross-regional countries in implementing differentiated environmental governance and for cross-sector economic entities in pursuing differentiated green development strategies.
Keywords: Differentiated environmental governance, Dynamic qualitative comparative analysis, Policy instrument synergy, Regional heterogeneity, Time-varying efficacy
Received: 14 Nov 2025; Accepted: 12 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Han. 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: Xiao Han
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