The impact of natural resource dependency on green economic growth: A business environment perspective

Transforming the “resource curse” into a “resource blessing” is crucial for achieving sustainable development goals. This paper develops business environment indicators using ecosystem theory to examine the influence of natural resource reliance on green economic growth from a business environment perspective. The empirical study is based on panel data analysis of 266 Chinese cities from 2012 to 2021. The results show that the business environment and its sub-dimensions financial environment, market environment, and political and legal environment can weaken the inhibitory effect of natural resource dependence on green economic growth, and robustness and endogeneity analyses are conducted. Further, the threshold regression reveals that the business environment and its sub-dimensions of financial environment can turn the “resource curse” into “resource blessing” after reaching the threshold value. Finally, heterogeneity analysis reveals that the same policy has varying regulatory effects in resource-based versus non-resource-based cities.