The impact of the depth of environmental provisions in regional trade agreements on China’s fisheries and aquaculture trade

Based on a panel data covering China and 47 major partner countries from 2000 to 2019, this study employs an extended gravity model to systematically examine the impact of environmental provisions depth in regional trade agreements on China’s fisheries and aquaculture products trade. The results show that deeper environmental provisions significantly reduce China’s aquatic product imports but have no significant effect on exports. The robustness of these findings is supported by endogeneity corrections and multiple robustness checks. Heterogeneity analysis reveals clear structural differences. Trade restrictive provisions significantly reduce imports, whereas trade facilitative provisions exert no notable effect; the import-reducing effect is particularly pronounced in long-distance trade and high-income country markets, but insignificant in short-distance and non-high-income country samples, highlighting the critical moderating roles of geographic distance and development level in determining the effectiveness of institutional rules. This study is the first to focus specifically on China’s fisheries and aquaculture sector, providing empirical evidence on the economic effects of green trade rules.