The impact of natural resource endowment and green finance on green economic efficiency in the context of COP26

The 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) emphasized that all parties should focus on practical actions for the next step, take “implementation” as the key word, vigorously promote green and low-carbon development and accelerate the application of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. Green sustainable development has become an important factor in achieving the goals of COP26, so improvements in green economic efficiency (GEE) has become the focus of governments, enterprises and academia. This study selected data from 30 regions across China between 2007 and 2021, used the super-efficiency SBM method to evaluate GEE and then used a tobit model to verify the effects of natural resource endowment and green finance on GEE; thus, based on the results of our empirical analysis, we proposed countermeasures to improve green economic efficiency. Our conclusions were as follows: (1) the average GEE value was 0.737, there was an overall rising trend during the study period, the low-level GEE areas were concentrated in the central and western regions and the high-level areas were in the eastern region; (2) the elasticity coefficient of natural resource endowments was negative, indicating a “resource curse” effect on the GEE that was long-term and persistent, and the impact of green finance on GEE had a “U"-shaped relationship, which was in line with the EKC hypothesis; (3) digital economies could promote GEE. The impacts of environmental regulations on GEE also presented “U"-shaped relationships. The influence coefficient of foreign direct investment on GEE was positive, had a low significance value and its coefficient was also small. The coefficients of the primary and secondary terms of the industrial structure index were positive, which confirmed that the tertiary industry sector could significantly improve GEE.