Search results

Using protest event analysis, this study aims to investigate which risk factors influence the severity of environmental protests in China, thus filling a gap in China-related environmental protest literature.

Using a database derived from media coverage of 129 environmental protests in China from 2009 to 2015, this empirical study identifies underlying risk factors influencing environmental protest severity, quantifies these protest cases and verifies the associations between risk factors and severity using ordered logistic regression.

The results show that higher environmental health threat, economic loss, distrust of local government, lack of local governmental response, improper local government action and higher population density are likely to increase environmental protest severity; however, contrary to expectations, environmental information disclosure has no significant effect. These findings illuminate the vital and variational role of local government throughout all stages of the evolutionary process in environmental protests. Moreover, public distrust of local government is the principal cause of these protests.

This study enhances the understanding of how Chinese environmental protests arise from the identified risk factors and contributes to quantitative multi-case research in this area. Furthermore, the findings may help local governments in China, as well as in other countries, to enact positive measures to prevent serious environmental protests and improve their ability to address the environmental problems that cause protests. More effective governance can decrease the number and severity of environmental protests and thus promote social stability.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that synergy between firms and local institutions may lead to success even in an economic environment which cannot offer competitive advantages to high tech industrial clustering. However, the condition for such a complex result is convergence between cluster‐based regional development policy, the related industry national strategy and the central government preferential policy for less developed areas.

The experiences selected as case studies are the Xi'an National Civil Aerospace Base in Shaanxi Province (China) and CampaniAerospace in Campania region (Italy). As information was gathered both through policy documents (China and Italy) and direct interviews to cluster's stakeholders (Italy), the outcome is, according to the criteria suggested by Eisenhardt and Yin, a qualitative research. Comparing economic data provided by the respective countries' Statistical Offices, the authors assessed that Shaanxi Province and the Campania region share a “peripheral” position within their respective national context. Starting from this, the authors analyzed the formal documents which reported the experience of the two clusters.

The finding is that the outcome (the status of cluster which is assumed as “a value in itself”) of the convergence between firms' will to gain agglomeration advantages and the policymakers' plan to redress interregional economic disparities is definitely not an efficiency‐driven process. In the high tech sectors which are very sensitive to the increasing competition for technology on the international market, the pursuit of efficiency may, on the contrary, be dissipated.

As attested by the comparative literature, aims and performance of industrial clusters differ in accordance with the stage of economic development as well as the institutional and regulatory framework. The paper demonstrates, however, that in the take‐off stage, it is the position occupied by the host region within the national context which determines the behaviour of the actors concerned as well as the outcome of their commitment.