IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/ieaple/vyid10.1007_s10784-020-09495-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Green building in China

Author

Listed:
  • Yayun Shen

    (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

  • Michael Faure

    (Maastricht University)

Abstract

Green buildings can play a role in helping countries meet their commitments under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Green building can provide an important contribution to sustainability, for example, by improving energy efficiency, by improving indoor air quality, and by effective waste treatment. In practice, we see that there is an increasing interest in various forms of green building. However, the existing literature has not identified the role of law in promoting green building. It is, moreover, striking that green building has taken off in a rather impressive manner in China. Although generally there are still huge environmental problems with which China is confronted, for many years already China has been engaged in green building. This paper wants to examine what explains the relative success of green building in China; What specific legal instruments can be used to promote green building; and what lessons can be drawn more generally from experience in China? The paper uses the theory of smart regulation (Gunningham/Grabosky) and the economic analysis of law to examine the importance of different instruments in promoting green building. The paper comes to two key results, being that no single instrument in itself is optimal to promote green building as a result of which a smart mix needs to be designed to promote green building; moreover, for the specific case of China, it is the large government involvement in the economy that has been able to jump-start green building. The Chinese government has, on the one hand, mandated green building in government projects, but on the other hand, also used market-based instruments (like subsidies and public procurement) to promote green building.

Suggested Citation

  • Yayun Shen & Michael Faure, 0. "Green building in China," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-17.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:ieaple:v::y::i::d:10.1007_s10784-020-09495-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s10784-020-09495-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10784-020-09495-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10784-020-09495-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sarah L. Stafford, 2007. "Should you turn yourself in? The consequences of environmental self-policing," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(2), pages 305-326.
    2. Stefanadis, Christodoulos, 2003. "Self-Regulation, Innovation, and the Financial Industry," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 5-25, January.
    3. R. H. Coase, 2013. "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 837-877.
    4. Brian C. Murray & Maureen L. Cropper & Francisco C. de la Chesnaye & John M. Reilly, 2014. "How Effective Are US Renewable Energy Subsidies in Cutting Greenhouse Gases?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 569-574, May.
    5. ., 2016. "Public utility information systems," Chapters, in: Public Utilities, Second Edition, chapter 12, pages 239-256, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Martin D. D. Evans & Dagfinn Rime, 2017. "Order Flow Information and Spot Rate Dynamics," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Studies in Foreign Exchange Economics, chapter 17, pages 725-776, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Steven Shavell, 2011. "Corrective Taxation versus Liability as a Solution to the Problem of Harmful Externalities," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(S4), pages 249-266.
    8. Maréchal, Kevin, 2010. "Not irrational but habitual: The importance of "behavioural lock-in" in energy consumption," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 1104-1114, March.
    9. Adolf K.Y. Ng & Zaili Yang & Stephen Cahoon & Paul T.W. Lee, 2016. "Issue Information," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(3), pages 343-345, September.
    10. Wei, Na & Yong, Wu & Yan, Song & Zhongcheng, Dong, 2009. "Government management and implementation of national real-time energy monitoring system for China large-scale public building," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2087-2091, June.
    11. Peter Cheng & Lin Li & Wilson H.S. Tong, 2016. "Target Information Asymmetry and Acquisition Price," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(7-8), pages 976-1016, July.
    12. Bruno S. Frey & Reto Jegen, 2001. "Motivation Crowding Theory," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(5), pages 589-611, December.
    13. Forest L. Reinhardt & Robert N. Stavins & Richard H. K. Vietor, 2008. "Corporate Social Responsibility Through an Economic Lens," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 2(2), pages 219-239, Summer.
    14. Simcoe, Timothy & Toffel, Michael W., 2014. "Government green procurement spillovers: Evidence from municipal building policies in California," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 411-434.
    15. Kaplow, Louis & Shavell, Steven, 1994. "Optimal Law Enforcement with Self-Reporting of Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(3), pages 583-606, June.
    16. Steven Shavell, 2012. "A Fundamental Enforcement Cost Advantage of the Negligence Rule over Regulation," NBER Working Papers 18418, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Kong, Xiangfei & Lu, Shilei & Wu, Yong, 2012. "A review of building energy efficiency in China during “Eleventh Five-Year Plan” period," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 624-635.
    18. Jing Liu & Michael Faure, 2018. "Risk-sharing agreements to cover environmental damage: theory and practice," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 255-273, April.
    19. Li, Jun, 2016. "Energy performance heterogeneity in China׳s buildings sector: A data-driven investigation," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 1587-1600.
    20. Baumol,William J. & Oates,Wallace E., 1988. "The Theory of Environmental Policy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521322249, January.
    21. Le Grand, Julian, 1991. "The Theory of Government Failure," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(4), pages 423-442, October.
    22. Sung, Ming-Chien & Johnson, Johnnie E.V. & McDonald, David C.J., 2016. "Informed trading, market efficiency and volatility," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 56-59.
    23. Bruno S. Frey, 1994. "How Intrinsic Motivation is Crowded out and in," Rationality and Society, , vol. 6(3), pages 334-352, July.
    24. WeiYu Ji & Edwin H. W. Chan, 2019. "Critical Factors Influencing the Adoption of Smart Home Energy Technology in China: A Guangdong Province Case Study," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-24, November.
    25. Steven Shavell, 2011. "Corrective Taxation versus Liability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 273-276, May.
    26. Annunziata, Eleonora & Frey, Marco & Rizzi, Francesco, 2013. "Towards nearly zero-energy buildings: The state-of-art of national regulations in Europe," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 125-133.
    27. Hunt Allcott & Todd Rogers, 2014. "The Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Behavioral Interventions: Experimental Evidence from Energy Conservation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 3003-3037, October.
    28. Robert Innes & Abdoul G. Sam, 2008. "Voluntary Pollution Reductions and the Enforcement of Environmental Law: An Empirical Study of the 33/50 Program," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(2), pages 271-296, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xia Li & Timothy Simcoe, 2021. "Competing or complementary labels? Estimating spillovers in Chinese green building certification," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(13), pages 2451-2476, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yayun Shen & Michael Faure, 2021. "Green building in China," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 183-199, June.
    2. Moore, Megan & Cristofalo, Margaret & Dotolo, Danae & Torres, Nicole & Lahdya, Alexandra & Ho, Leyna & Vogel, Mia & Forrester, Mollie & Conley, Bonnie & Fouts, Susan, 2017. "When high pressure, system constraints, and a social justice mission collide: A socio-structural analysis of emergency department social work services," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 104-114.
    3. Steven Shavell, 2010. "The Corrective Tax versus Liability As Solutions to the Problem of Harmful Externalities," NBER Working Papers 16235, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Schmidt, Klaus & Herweg, Fabian, 2021. "Prices versus Quantities with Morally Concerned Consumers," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242371, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. Giorgos N. Diakoulakis & Athanasios Kampas, 2023. "Emission taxes for genuine altruistic firms," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 94(1), pages 343-359, March.
    6. Edwin Woerdman & Jan Willem Bolderdijk, 2017. "Emissions trading for households? A behavioral law and economics perspective," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 553-578, December.
    7. Kathleen Segerson, 2013. "Voluntary Approaches to Environmental Protection and Resource Management," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 161-180, June.
    8. Frans P. Vries & Nick Hanley, 2016. "Incentive-Based Policy Design for Pollution Control and Biodiversity Conservation: A Review," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 63(4), pages 687-702, April.
    9. Aseem Kaul & Jiao Luo, 2018. "An economic case for CSR: The comparative efficiency of for‐profit firms in meeting consumer demand for social goods," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(6), pages 1650-1677, June.
    10. Thomas Akpan Harry & Ekemini John Peter & Nsidibe Akpan Udoduk, 2022. "Environmental Impact Assessment Of Oil Producing Communities In Part Of The Niger Delta. A Case Study Of Ibeno, Ikot Abasi, Onna And Esit-Eket Local Government Area In Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria," Environmental Contaminants Reviews (ECR), Zibeline International Publishing, vol. 5(2), pages 49-56, April.
    11. Stavins, Robert, 2001. "Lessons From the American Experiment With Market-Based Environmental Policies," RFF Working Paper Series dp-01-53, Resources for the Future.
    12. Nathalie Berta, 2016. "On the definition of externality as a missing market," Post-Print halshs-01277990, HAL.
    13. Gauguier, Jean-Jacques, 2009. "L’industrialisation de l’Open Source," Economics Thesis from University Paris Dauphine, Paris Dauphine University, number 123456789/4388 edited by Toledano, Joëlle.
    14. Charles Raux, 2011. "Downstream Emissions Trading for Transport," Transportation Research, Economics and Policy, in: Werner Rothengatter & Yoshitsugu Hayashi & Wolfgang Schade (ed.), Transport Moving to Climate Intelligence, chapter 0, pages 209-226, Springer.
    15. Hochman, Oded & Rausser, Gordon C., 1999. "Zoning as a control of pollution in a spatial environment," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt0qq9849t, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    16. Templet, Paul H., 1995. "Grazing the commons: an empirical analysis of externalities, subsidies and sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 141-159, February.
    17. Stavins, Robert, 2004. "Environmental Economics," RFF Working Paper Series dp-04-54, Resources for the Future.
    18. Ahmed, Sadiq, 1991. "Fiscal policyfor managing Indonesia's environment," Policy Research Working Paper Series 786, The World Bank.
    19. Charles Raux, 2008. "Tradable driving rights in urban areas: their potential for tackling congestion and traffic-related pollution," Post-Print halshs-00185012, HAL.
    20. Dieter Schmidtchen & Jenny Helstroffer & Christian Koboldt, 2021. "Regulatory failure and the polluter pays principle: why regulatory impact assessment dominates the polluter pays principle," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 23(1), pages 109-144, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:ieaple:v::y::i::d:10.1007_s10784-020-09495-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.