The Impact of Environmental Regulation on Human Sustainable Development: Evidence from China

In recent years, the continuous progress of industrialization and rapid economic development have brought great pressure to the environment. Local governments have strengthened environmental regulation to protect the ecological environment. In order to measure the current status of human sustainable development, which is the ultimate goal of the sustainable development of society, this paper constructs the Human Sustainable Development Index to assess the human sustainable development of each province in China from 2005 to 2017. In addition, this paper empirically analyzes the direct and indirect effects of environmental regulation on human sustainable development. The result shows that China has made great progress in human sustainable development from 2005 to 2017. Although the provincial rankings of human sustainable development have changed little over the years, the inter-regional gap of human sustainable development is narrowing. Environmental regulation not only has a direct impact on human sustainable development, but also has an indirect impact through technology innovation. In addition, the increase in the proportion of tertiary industry can also improve human sustainable development. In the future, the government should take human sustainable development as the center, strengthen environmental regulation, promote technology innovation and industrial structure upgrading.