Configurational Pathways for Improving Marine Environmental Governance Efficiency in the Digital Era: A Two-Stage Network SBM and fsQCA Analysis

With the backdrop of the coexistence of sustainable development of marine economy and ecological environment restrictions, how to enhance the efficiency of marine environmental governance (MEGE) has become a significant topic whereby coastal regions should attain green transformation. The research object in this paper is 11 coastal provincial administrative units in mainland China between 2013 and 2021, and marine environmental governance is divided into two stages of production and governance. MEGE and its stage efficiency are measured with the help of the two-stage super-efficiency Network SBM model, and the efficiency growth is characterized with the help of the Network Malmquist index. It is on this basis that, using the technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework, six antecedent conditions of digital economy, technological innovation, marine industrial structure, marine industrial agglomeration, environmental regulation, and degree of openness are chosen and fsQCA is applied to determine the multiple configuration paths of high MEGE growth. The findings indicate the following: (1) The MEGE in the coastal regions of China is improving in general, although the differences in the region remain evident. The efficiency characteristics of the production stage and the governance stage differ, and the inter-provincial differentiation of the governance stage is more pronounced. (2) No single condition is required to achieve high MEGE growth but four equifinal configurations created by the combined action of several conditions can be further reduced to three types, namely technology–environment driven, technology–organization–environment synergistic and technology–organization driven. (3) There exists apparent synergy, compensation, and substitution relationships between technology, organization, and environmental conditions. The most important aspect of high-efficiency growth is not that all positive conditions are on a high level simultaneously, but that a complex of conditions corresponding to the foundation of regional development is created. (4) High and non-high MEGE growth have a strong causal asymmetry and the effective driving routes in various regions are also different. This paper extends the study of the efficiency of marine environmental governance in the two dimensions of internal stage structure and configuration mechanism, and applies accurate, path adaptation, and regional differentiation governance to coastal regions.