ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Affairs and Policy
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1656530
This article is part of the Research TopicChallenges and Solutions in Forecasting and Decision-Making in Marine Economy and Management, Volume IIView all 11 articles
Environmental Regulation and the Upgrading of Marine Industries: Evidence from China's Coastal Provinces
Provisionally accepted
- Shandong Women's University, Jinan, China
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Upgrading China's marine industrial structure toward sustainability and higher value is central to the nation's strategy of becoming a maritime power. Environmental regulation plays a pivotal role in this transition, yet its influence in the marine sector remains insufficiently examined. Using panel data from 11 coastal provinces, this study distinguishes between command-and-control and market-based regulation, and applies a threshold regression model to evaluate their respective impacts and interactions. The analysis reveals that command-and-control regulation follows an inverted U-shaped pattern: moderate enforcement encourages industrial optimization, while overly stringent measures suppress innovation and slow transformation. Market-based regulation currently has a net negative effect, reflecting limited effectiveness under existing policy conditions. Nonetheless, evidence points to a potential U-shaped relationship, suggesting that better policy design and implementation could reverse this trend. Threshold results further show that while command-and-control regulation is unaffected by market-based intensity, strong command-and-control enforcement markedly weakens the impact of market-based tools. These findings underscore the need to calibrate regulatory intensity and improve coordination between regulatory instruments. A balanced mix of policies, tailored to the specific dynamics of the marine economy, can help unlock the full potential of environmental regulation and support high-quality, sustainable growth in China's marine industries.
Keywords: Marine economy, environmental regulation, Industrial upgrading, threshold effect, policy, Interaction
Received: 30 Jun 2025; Accepted: 29 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Wang and Cai. 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: Lu Liu, Shandong Women's University, Jinan, China
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