Multi-objective competition of local governments and cross-regional transfer of polluting industries—simulation based on the Yangtze River Economic Belt

Abstract The Yangtze River Economic Belt is the “main artery” for smooth domestic and international dual circulation, and it is a major strategy for China’s coordinated regional development to promote rational and orderly industrial transfer and high-quality green development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Taking the transfer of polluting industries in the Yangtze River Economic Belt as the research object, this paper constructs a system dynamics model based on the comprehensive consideration of the elements of social development, industrial economy, ecological environment, and government competition, to explore the multiple impacts of the four local government competition strategies, namely, economy, innovation, infrastructure, and environmental competition, as well as their combinations on the transfer of polluting industries in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The results show that: 1. When no competitive strategy is adopted, the transfer scale of polluting industries will shrink as a whole, and the effect of regional ecological environment governance will still increase slightly. 2. In the single competition strategy, infrastructure competition intensifies the transfer of polluting industries, while innovation, economic, and environmental competition strategies will inhibit the transfer of polluting industries in the long term, and the inhibitory effects increase in sequence. 3. In the combined competition strategy, innovation and infrastructure competition will significantly intensify the transfer of polluting industries, while the combination of other strategies all have an inhibitory effect. Among them, economic and environmental competition, as well as comprehensive competition, perform better in simultaneously curbing the increase in the proportion of polluting industries and optimizing the regional ecological environment. 4. By comparing the single competitive strategy with the combined competitive strategy, it is found that the economic and innovation and environmental competitive strategy outperforms the comprehensive competition in curbing the entry of polluting industries and improving the quality of the ecological environment. This will continue to contribute to the high-quality and green development of industries in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. 5. Empirical results of exogenous policy shocks show that the impact of global industrial chain reconstruction on the transfer of polluting industries in the Yangtze River Economic Belt is almost negligible. Technological mutations significantly suppress the transfer of polluting industries, while the tightening of carbon emission policies instead intensifies the trend of the transfer of polluting industries. Therefore, it is necessary to continuously improve the promotion and assessment mechanism for local officials, alleviate the deviation of fiscal incentives among regions, give full play to the role of the market-oriented mechanism, strengthen the systematic concept and systematic thinking of local governments, promote regional coordinated governance, and drive the high-quality development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt through innovation.