The Changing Factors Affecting Local Environmental Governance in China: Evidence from a Study of Prefecture-Level Cities in Guangdong Province

This paper aims to examine the changing factors underlying China’s environmental governance, by investigating the long-term dynamic impacts of related endogenous and exogenous factors and considering regional differences in these factors. The study estimated environmental regulation intensity and employed the geographical detector technique to analyze its driving factors, based on 21 prefecture-level cities in Guangdong Province, China, from 1990 to 2016. The results showed that environmental regulation intensity has increased in Guangdong Province over the past 27 years. The results also indicated that local environmental governance was affected by global–local interactions and changed based on different regional developmental phases. At first, factors within a region affected local environmental policies more significantly, such as economic development and urbanization. However, in the long run, globalization’s impacts have been the most important factors influencing environmental governance. Further analysis showed that environmental regulation intensity in Guangdong Province’s different regions was affected by different driven factors. Our analyses contribute to the understanding of China’s environmental governance and have policy implications for environmental problem management and China’s construction of an ecological civilization.