Search Results (5,840)

Market equilibrium regulation constitutes a dynamic decision-making problem on complex networks, where strategic firms, consumers, platforms, and regulators interact under uncertain demand, delayed price information, and networked spillovers. Although existing multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) methods succeed at decentralized adaptation, they typically maximize private rewards without encoding an explicit equilibrium residual or a rigorous link to market clearing. We introduce an Equilibrium-Residual Mirror Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (ERM-MARL) framework for regulating market equilibria. The framework formulates a regulated Markov potential game: agents learn pricing, production, and risk-control policies while a dual regulation layer penalizes violations of market clearing, price volatility, and network risk. An equilibrium-residual shaping mechanism aligns each agent’s policy gradient with a global regulation potential. The analysis establishes existence of equilibrium, uniqueness under strong monotonicity, bounded dual stability, and almost-sure convergence of the stochastic mirror actor–critic recursion. Simulation experiments on networked markets demonstrate faster equilibrium-residual decay, higher welfare, lower price volatility, and greater robustness compared with representative MARL and game-learning baselines. Full article

Agroecological approaches are increasingly recognized as sustainable alternatives to conventional weed management practices. This review examines the role of soybean, potato, and winter wheat as key crops within agroecological systems for effective weed suppression. Four management strategies—crop rotation, post-harvest mulching, optimized planting density (for soybean and potato), and varietal mixtures (for winter wheat)—are evaluated for their influence on weed dynamics and overall system performance. The synthesis of current studies indicates that these practices can significantly reduce weed pressure while enhancing soil health, biodiversity, and the provision of key ecosystem services, including provisioning, regulating, and supporting functions. In addition, these approaches contribute to improved crop productivity and reduced reliance on chemical inputs. Agroecological strategies also support pest regulation, water-use efficiency, and climate resilience, promoting more sustainable and resource-efficient agricultural systems. Despite these benefits, challenges related to farmer adoption, labor requirements, and limited policy support remain. Overall, this review highlights the potential of integrated agroecological practices to achieve sustainable agricultural intensification while balancing ecological sustainability with economic viability. Further research and supportive policy frameworks are needed to facilitate the wider implementation of these approaches across diverse agroecosystems. Full article

Forest-product certification now operates at the intersection of private sustainability governance, market access, and mandatory due diligence. This structured narrative review asks how Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) certification, together with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), affect competitiveness and the distribution of compliance costs in Polish business-to-business and export-oriented wood-product supply chains. A documented revision-stage search and screening procedure produced an evidence base of 55 peer-reviewed, regulatory, statistical, and sectoral sources. The analytical framework combines private-governance theory, stakeholder conflict analysis, and relationship marketing to examine information asymmetry, bargaining power, cost allocation, and market access. The Polish case is characterised by a large publicly owned forest resource, extensive but overlapping FSC and PEFC coverage, and strongly export-oriented downstream industries. Certification can reduce buyer verification costs, support supplier qualification, improve traceability, and protect access to demanding markets. However, fixed audit, documentation, digitalisation, and certified-material costs are borne disproportionately by small and medium-sized enterprises, especially where lead buyers do not share adaptation costs. EUDR strengthens these asymmetries because certified status can support, but does not replace, legal due diligence. The review contributes a governance-based explanation of why the same sustainability requirements can generate resilience and market access for digitally mature exporters while creating entry barriers, supplier exclusion, and concentration risks for smaller firms. Policy support should therefore combine clear demand signals, group certification, shared traceability infrastructure, advisory services, and buyer–supplier cost-sharing arrangements. Full article

Background: The EU Health Technology Assessment Regulation (EU-HTA R), effective January 2025, mandates Joint Clinical Assessments (JCAs) to harmonize HTA across Member States. However, its implementation raises fundamental questions about methodological coherence, institutional capacity, and epistemological alignment. Objectives: This manuscript (1) systematically assesses whether the stated strategic and operational objectives of the EU-HTA R are achievable under current implementation conditions; (2) examines the implications for EU institutional legitimacy if these objectives are not met; and (3) proposes an epistemological framework as a prerequisite for developing a coherent joint HTA methodology. Methods: We conducted a critical policy analysis of the EU-HTA R, its implementing guidance documents, and published templates, supplemented by a comparative review of Member State HTA methodologies and their underlying philosophical foundations. Results: The analysis reveals that the EU-HTA R is unlikely to achieve its strategic goals under current conditions. Key findings include: guidance documents of substandard methodological quality; a restricted assessment scope that excludes scientific judgement and contextualization; insufficient resources and additional workload for national HTA bodies without reducing existing obligations; unresolved epistemological divergences among Member States spanning Bayesian vs. frequentist approaches, Fisher vs. Neyman–Pearson frameworks, and utilitarian vs. deontological ethical foundations; and procedural shortcomings in stakeholder consultation and expert involvement. These shortcomings risk undermining the epistemic authority and legitimacy of EU institutions. Conclusions: Prior epistemological and normative alignment across Member States is a prerequisite for any robust shared HTA methodology. Revisions to the EU-HTA R and comprehensive updates of guidance documents are necessary, with concrete safeguards—including independent peer review, identified authorship, and adequate resourcing—to ensure substantive rather than merely nominal implementation. A phased roadmap is proposed: establishing clear objectives, aligning epistemological foundations, developing institutional structures, and creating operationally consistent guidance. Full article

As global environmental challenges intensify and the imperative to mitigate extreme climate change grows increasingly urgent, the sustainable development of economic and social systems has emerged as a fundamental pathway for addressing environmental challenges. Smart manufacturing, as a core technology of the new round of technological revolution, can drive green transformation and enhance sustainable development performance. Using a sample of A-share listed manufacturing corporations from 2009 to 2023, this study systematically investigates the impact, underlying mechanisms, and heterogeneity of smart manufacturing on the sustainable development performance of manufacturing corporations from the perspective of local environmental regulation stringency. The results show that corporate smart manufacturing significantly improves sustainable development performance. This conclusion remains robust after addressing endogeneity concerns and conducting a series of robustness checks. Mechanism analysis reveals that corporate smart manufacturing operates via three primary channels: the data asset accumulation effect, the green technology innovation effect, and the information environment improvement effect. Furthermore, the moderating role of local environmental regulation stringency follows an inverted U-shaped trajectory, suggesting that regulatory stringency facilitates the smart manufacturing–performance nexus only up to a certain threshold, beyond which it becomes counterproductive. Heterogeneity analysis further shows that the positive effect is particularly pronounced among private corporations, large-scale corporations, those located in the eastern region, and those situated in key environmental protection cities. By uncovering the micro-level mechanisms through which smart manufacturing affects sustainable performance, this study offers novel theoretical insights and actionable policy implications for leveraging intelligent technologies to advance manufacturing sustainability, both in China and globally, in support of the nation’s carbon peaking and carbon neutrality commitments. Full article

Whether the marketization of data as a production factor can be redirected toward environmental ends is a central question for the governance of the digital economy. This study investigates whether and how the pilot policy for big data trading platforms improves corporate green development performance (CGDP). Using A-share firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2010 to 2024, this paper treats the pilot policy for big data trading platforms as a quasi-natural experiment and applies a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) design to estimate its effect on CGDP, together with the transmission channels and boundary conditions that govern it. Because the rollout is staggered, we complement the two-way fixed-effects benchmark with the heterogeneity-robust estimators of Callaway and Sant’Anna, Sun and Abraham, and the Goodman–Bacon decomposition, and cluster standard errors at the city level. The policy raises CGDP by 0.076, about 6.1% of the sample mean. The estimate remains robust to an event-study/parallel-trend test, placebo tests, propensity score matching (PSM), the Oster selection-on-unobservables bound, alternative and broader green outcome measures—including a significant reduction in chemical oxygen-demand emissions—controls for concurrent digital and innovation policies, exclusion of the 2020 pandemic year, and industry fixed effects. Mechanism evidence shows that the effect operates through stronger green dual innovation, upgraded human capital, and heightened scrutiny from media outlets and securities analysts. The impact is stronger for firms whose executives exhibit greater green awareness and whose internal control is of higher quality, and in more competitive industries and regions with stricter environmental regulation. By showing that a market for data can be redirected toward environmental ends, this study links data-factor marketization to corporate green transition and provides policy evidence for aligning digital economy reform with sustainable development. Full article

The environmental implications of globalization and financial inclusion have become a major concern for both policymakers and researchers. This study examines the heterogeneous relationships between Global Value Chain (GVC) participation, financial inclusion, and CO₂ emissions in a panel of 41 developed and emerging economies over the period 2004–2022. To capture differences across emission levels, the analysis employs the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR), complemented by Fixed Effects (FE), System GMM, and Common Correlated Effects Mean Group (CCEMG) estimators for robustness. The findings reveal substantial heterogeneity across the conditional distribution of CO₂ emissions. Forward and backward GVC participation exhibit distinct environmental associations across emission levels, while financial inclusion plays a differentiated moderating role in these relationships. The conditional marginal effects further show that the environmental implications of GVC participation depend on the level of financial inclusion. The robustness analysis confirms the consistency of these findings across alternative estimators. Overall, the results suggest that the environmental consequences of globalization depend on both countries’ emission levels and the role of financial inclusion in shaping the effects of GVC participation. From a policy perspective, the findings highlight the need to align financial development with environmental objectives. Strengthening green finance frameworks and environmental regulations can help ensure that deeper integration into global production networks supports sustainable development rather than increasing environmental degradation. Full article

Green collaborative innovation is a complex socio-technical system involving interactions among governments, universities, enterprises, and financial institutions. However, existing studies often examine these actors separately or focus on bilateral relationships, limiting the understanding of how multi-agent strategies jointly evolve toward sustainable innovation. This study develops a four-player evolutionary game model incorporating regional governments, universities, local enterprises, and green financial institutions to investigate the dynamic evolution of green collaborative innovation under bounded rationality. The model integrates fiscal incentives, technology commercialization returns, financial constraints, reputation effects, and social advocacy mechanisms to explore the conditions under which collaborative strategies emerge and stabilize. Theoretical analysis identifies the evolutionary conditions of different strategic combinations, while numerical simulations examine how key factors influence the evolution process. The results reveal that enterprise deep green transformation plays a central role in shaping the evolution of the entire collaborative innovation system. Government subsidies and financial constraints jointly influence enterprises’ transformation decisions, while technology commercialization returns and research support determine universities’ incentives for green R&D. Green financial institutions contribute not only through capital provision, but also through environmental risk assessment and market-based governance. In addition, social advocacy indirectly affects the evolutionary process by influencing reputation-related incentives and strengthening institutional accountability. This study contributes to green innovation and systems science research by providing a multi-agent evolutionary framework that explains the interactions among policy, technology, finance, and institutional factors. The findings suggest that effective green collaborative innovation requires coordinated governance mechanisms that integrate fiscal support, financial regulation, technology transfer, and social supervision. Full article

The objective of this paper is to examine the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a test case of Gulf energy transition finance by analyzing how a hydrocarbon-dependent economy is constructing the financial, regulatory, and institutional architecture required to move from net-zero pledges to climate finance flows. Rather than treating climate finance as a set of isolated instruments, the paper conceptualizes the UAE’s approach as a state-led transition-finance model shaped by Gulf state capitalism, sovereign wealth accumulation, national oil company strategy, financial regulation, and post-COP28 climate diplomacy. Using a qualitative policy and institutional review, the paper maps the UAE’s transition-finance architecture across three interrelated dimensions: institutions and governance, financial instruments, and policy alignment. It examines the role of federal strategies such as Net Zero 2050 and the UAE Energy Strategy 2050, regulatory actors including the Central Bank of the UAE, the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA), Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), and Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), and key financial mechanisms including green bonds and sukuk, sustainability-linked finance, sovereign wealth fund investments, national oil company decarbonization strategies, blended-finance platforms, and carbon-market mechanisms. The analysis finds that the UAE has developed a distinctive state-led, finance-centric model for financing the energy transition. This model enables rapid capital mobilization, de-risking of private investment, and strong international positioning, particularly following COP28 and the launch of ALTÉRRA. However, its effectiveness is constrained by unresolved tensions between net-zero ambition and hydrocarbon expansion, fragmented sustainable-finance regulation, limited carbon-pricing signals, uneven disclosure practices, underdeveloped domestic green capital markets, and restricted access to green finance for SMEs. The paper argues that the UAE’s climate-finance architecture is best understood neither as simple green diversification nor as symbolic climate positioning, but as an emerging Gulf model of transition finance: well-capitalized, and institutionally coordinated, yet structurally shaped by the same hydrocarbon rents and state-led governance logics it seeks to transform. By positioning the UAE as a benchmark, the paper contributes to debates on climate finance, state capitalism, and transition governance in hydrocarbon-dependent economies, while identifying the coherence gaps to be addressed for climate finance to support economy-wide decarbonization. Full article

Carbon emission trading is a vital market-based instrument for corporate sustainable development. Treating China’s carbon emission trading pilot as a quasi-natural experiment, this study employs panel data of A-share listed firms in high-carbon industries (2010–2023) and a time-varying difference-in-differences model to examine its effect on corporate ESG performance. The results confirm that carbon trading significantly enhances ESG performance. Beyond this, three key insights emerge. First, both executives’ green cognition and environmental policy uncertainty positively moderate this relationship; notably, a three-way interaction reveals partial substitution between the two moderators at high levels, refining the capability–pressure coupling framework. Second, green technology innovation is a statistically significant but economically weak mediator. This weakness stems from an internal offset—the policy promotes substantive invention patents while suppressing incremental utility model patents—and alternative channels, particularly financing constraints and carbon disclosure quality, which serve as the primary transmission pathways. Third, the policy effect is more pronounced among heavily polluting firms and in eastern and central regions, reflecting differential regulatory exposure. These findings offer practical implications for carbon market expansion, green innovation incentives, regionally differentiated regulation, and the integration of carbon asset management with executives’ green cognition development. Full article

This paper examines the threshold impact of media-based attention to transition and physical climate risks on banks’ credit risk among the 230 largest US commercial banks from 2011 to 2022. Using a dynamic panel threshold model, our analysis reveals a non-linear relationship between media-based climate risk and banks’ credit risk. The empirical results indicate the existence of a significant threshold dividing the data into lower and upper regimes for both climate transition risks and physical climate risks. More specifically, the estimated threshold levels are 0.500 for the transition risk index and 0.571 for the physical climate risk index. Below these critical thresholds, banks appear resilient to increased media attention to climate risks; however, once these thresholds are exceeded, growing concern about climate risks significantly increases banks’ vulnerability to credit risk. These findings highlight the critical implications of physical and transition risks for financial stability. Our results are robust to a range of alternative measures and model specifications, providing valuable insights for bank managers, regulators, and policymakers, while emphasizing the need to integrate media-based climate risk considerations into credit risk assessments and policy frameworks to strengthen the banking sector’s resilience. Full article

Eco-compensation is not only an important supplementary source of funding for ecological conservation in national parks, but also an important mechanism through which ecological beneficiaries share the costs of national park conservation. In the context of the public welfare of national parks, free admission does not imply the absence of responsibility. Therefore, it is essential to strengthen tourists’ awareness of ecological conservation for national park management. Taking Wuyishan National Park as the study area, this study employed a questionnaire survey, distributed 630 questionnaires in total, and obtained 582 valid responses. The contingent valuation method (CVM) and a multiple-bounded dichotomous choice (MBDC) design were used to examine tourists’ willingness to pay (WTP) for eco-compensation and its influencing factors: (1) The tourists’ estimated average WTP for eco-compensation in Wuyishan National Park is approximately ¥451.72, which is higher than the total cost of admission and basic experience activities in the park. It implies that tourists have a relatively high willingness to pay for eco-compensation in the national park. (2) Based on Value–Belief–Norm (VBN) theory, the hierarchical OLS regression results showed that personal norms (β = 0.636, p < 0.01), awareness of consequences (β = 0.259, p < 0.01), and ascription of responsibility (β = 0.277, p < 0.01) were positively associated with lnWTP. The strength of these associations varied across VBN dimensions, with personal norms showing the strongest positive association with tourists’ WTP for eco-compensation. (3) Income differences have a clear effect on WTP. Higher-income tourists reported greater WTP, which was more strongly associated with awareness of consequences and personal norms, whereas lower-income tourists were more responsive to environmental values and ascription of responsibility. This study identifies an association between tourists’ environmental responsibility and willingness to pay for eco-compensation in the context of national park tourism. The findings offer empirical support for policy measures to regulate tourist behavior, enhance national park revenue, and reinforce the public welfare function of national parks. Full article

The current paper concerns the interplay of the circular economy (CE) and global energy threats facing the hospitality industry. Despite the growing emphasis on CE implementation within sustainable hospitality, little empirical evidence explains how CE practices enhance hotels’ green energy resilience amid escalating global energy threats and resource uncertainty, particularly in emerging markets. Addressing this research gap, this paper investigates how the 6R CE model (Redesign, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover, and Rethink) strengthens green energy resilience in sustainable hotels while examining the moderating roles of policy clarity and regulations together with the influences of stakeholder collaboration and management commitment within the Saudi Arabian hospitality sector. The study adopted a four-wave temporally separated quantitative survey design, collecting data from 360 managers working in Saudi sustainable hotels across four time intervals. The proposed conceptual model was evaluated using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), complemented by mediation and moderation analyses. The findings demonstrate that global energy threats strongly stimulate CE adoption (β = 0.848, p < 0.001), while CE practices substantially improve green energy resilience (β = 0.719, p < 0.001). The results further reveal a strong indirect effect through the Strength of CE Implementation (β = 0.813, p < 0.001), highlighting implementation maturity as a critical mechanism through which circular initiatives translate into resilience outcomes. The proposed model explained 55% of the variance in CE implementation and demonstrated substantial predictive capability for energy resilience. Policy clarity and regulations significantly strengthen the CE–resilience relationship, while stakeholder collaboration and management commitment further enhance these relationships. The results further identify the 6R circularity framework as an effective strategic pathway through which sustainable hotels can mitigate global energy threats while enhancing organizational resilience. This study contributes to the CE and sustainable hospitality literature by providing one of the first empirical models linking CE implementation with green energy resilience under conditions of global energy uncertainty, offering actionable implications for policymakers, hotel managers, and the implementation of Saudi Vision 2030. Full article

Low-rise terraced housing constitutes a major segment of Taiwan’s residential market, yet stakeholder perception differences during residential development planning remain insufficiently understood, particularly regarding sustainability considerations. In this study, we investigate cognitive gaps among developers, homebuyers, and construction professionals across six planning dimensions, including site selection, housing price, capital capacity, construction risk, building planning, and sustainability. A structured questionnaire survey was conducted in Changhua County, Taiwan, yielding 176 valid responses (37 developers, 92 homebuyers, and 47 construction professionals). Data were analyzed using Cronbach’s α reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), chi-square tests, one-way ANOVA, Fisher’s LSD post hoc comparisons, and robustness analyses using ANCOVA and Tukey’s HSD. Significant stakeholder perception differences were identified for 15 of the 19 planning factors (p < 0.05). Supply-side stakeholders consistently prioritized construction cost, financing capacity, and construction risk, whereas homebuyers placed greater emphasis on transportation convenience, living amenities, spatial quality, and sustainability-related attributes, particularly green building certification and energy efficiency. Construction risk exhibited the largest cognitive gaps, with large effect sizes for construction difficulty (η² = 0.450) and government regulation (η² = 0.454). Within the sustainability dimension, governance transparency remained non-significant, suggesting that governance awareness has not yet matured into a differentiated stakeholder concern. Based on these findings, we propose the Stakeholder Cognitive Gap Framework (SCGF) as a conceptual and diagnostic framework for organizing stakeholder perception patterns. The findings contribute to understanding stakeholder cognitive divergence in residential development planning and provide practical implications for sustainable housing policy, developer decision-making, and participatory planning in non-metropolitan housing markets. Full article

Living shorelines are widely promoted as nature-based solutions to coastal erosion and wetland protection, yet hardened shoreline structures continue to dominate even in jurisdictions with explicit policy mandates prioritizing living shorelines. In this research, we examine why non-optimal shoreline modification outcomes persist in Virginia (USA) despite a regulatory framework designed to promote ecological alternatives. We use primary data from interviews with wetlands board members, marine contractors, and nonprofit organizations and findings from a secondary survey of shoreline property owners to analyze shoreline management as a multi-sector collaborative decision-making process. Findings show that shoreline outcomes are shaped less by individual regulatory decisions than by recurrent interaction mechanisms across sectors that operate upstream of permit review. Contractors play a critical agenda-setting role by shaping the alternatives presented to property owners, while social norms, anticipatory adaptation to regulatory expectations, and informal decision heuristics constrain option sets before projects reach wetlands boards. Formal co-management institutions are therefore asked to arbitrate projects that are already highly constrained, limiting their ability to advance policy goals. Improving policy fidelity requires attention to decision sequencing, intermediary incentives, and structural feedback dynamics, rather than simply refining permitting guidance. Targeting upstream decision points and interaction mechanisms offers greater potential to align shoreline management outcomes with living shoreline policy objectives. Full article