Abstract
This study attempts to examine how urban agglomerations establish sustainable environmental collaborative governance. To achieve this goal, the qualitative comparative analysis method is used to explore the conditions and models for urban agglomerations to establish environmental collaborative governance, with 12 urban agglomerations approved by the Chinese authorities as examples. Based on the collaborative governance framework, this paper proposes six starting conditions that affect the establishment of urban agglomeration collaboration: vertical intervention, horizontal cooperation, leadership attention, governance capacity, initial pollution, and economic governance. The interaction of these conditions was tested in the practice of environmental cooperation in urban agglomerations. The results show that horizontal cooperation, leadership attention, and economic governance are necessary conditions for the establishment of urban agglomeration cooperation. The authority-driven mode, capability-driven mode, and pressure-driven mode can promote cooperation. Vertical intervention, governance capacity, and initial pollution constitute the external and internal driving forces of urban agglomeration cooperation. These findings supplement the literature on urban agglomeration collaboration and provide policy makers with insight into sustainable urban agglomeration collaborative environmental governance.
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Notes
2019 Bulletin on the State of China's Ecological Environment. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China in 2020.
National New-type Urbanization Plan (2014–2020). Xinhua News Agency. Beijing, China, 2014.
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This research was supported by Social Sciences Research Grant by Hunan Province (20ZWA03 and 21YBQ012).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Cheng Fu: writing—review and editing, methodology, data collection, data analysis, software. Yuanyuan Xu: writing—review and editing, project administration, validation, formal analysis, supervision. Fujun Zhou: writing—original draft, data analysis, methodology. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Fu, C., Xu, Y. & Zhou, F. Environmental collaborative governance of urban agglomeration in China: influencing factors and drivers. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 38363–38379 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-24769-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-24769-w