China's outward foreign direct investment, environmental protection, and green technology progress

Weiyi Cai, Sijia Qin and Xiaoqi Meng

International Review of Economics & Finance, 2025, vol. 103, issue C

Abstract: We select panel data from 30 provinces and regions in China (except Tibet) from 2011 to 2019 as research samples and empirically test the influence mechanism of OFDI on sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions in China and the interregional spatial spillover effect by employing the mediation effect model and the spatial spillover model, respectively. We find that OFDI (1) has a significant negative spatial spillover effect on China's SO2 emissions; (2) affects the SO2 emissions by the scale effect, the composition effect and the technique effect; (3) inhibits SO2 emissions in the geographically proximate neighboring regions as well as in regions with a similar level of economic development by enhancing the progress of green technology in the latter regions. Finally, we put forward policy recommendations based on our findings, intending to provide a theoretical basis and practical countermeasures for China to expand its Opening-up Policy further while considering environmental governance.

Keywords: Outward foreign direct investment (OFDI); Sulfur dioxide (SO2); Spatial spillovers; Green technological progress (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1059056025005477
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reveco:v:103:y:2025:i:c:s1059056025005477

DOI: 10.1016/j.iref.2025.104384

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Economics & Finance is currently edited by H. Beladi and C. Chen

More articles in International Review of Economics & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().