An empirical study of environmental regulation on carbon emission efficiency in China

Abstract Based on the full‐sample panel data from 23 provinces and cities in China from 2013 to 2020, this paper studies the influences of environmental regulations on regional carbon emission efficiency in China under the background of opening carbon emission trading after dividing the country into high, medium, and low emission areas with emission quantity as the classification standard and constructing a regression model. The experiment reveals that the environmental regulation strength and carbon dioxide emission efficiency are positively correlated with each other in the first place. Second, there exists a positive correlation between environmental regulation strength and carbon dioxide emission efficiency in different emission regions, while in terms of the impact of environmental regulation on carbon emission efficiency, it influences the medium emission areas most, followed by low emission areas, and the high emission areas to the least. Then, current domestic environmental regulation is effective and plays a positive role in improving carbon emission efficiency and promoting the development of a low‐carbon economy in China.