Evaluation and analysis on the green development of China's industrial parks using the long-tail effect model

Industrial parks (IPs) have always been an important driving force for China's economic development. China has a great number of IPs, and this number is continuing to increase. The rapid development of IPs has brought great pressure on national resources utilization and environmental protection. The Chinese government has committed to the green development of IPs. In recent years, a series of policies on the green development of IPs have been introduced and implemented. Different from the limitation on the number of IPs in previous studies, this study used a larger data set containing 911 IPs. These IPs were divided into eight types according to their leading industries. The long-tail effect model was attempted to be used to provide quantitative description and analysis of the numerical distribution patterns of the indicators of economic output, environmental pollution, and resource consumption in IPs. Based on the long-tail effect model, for this paper, the performance of green development (PGD) in different types of IPs and IPs in different regions was further analyzed. The results show that China's IPs exhibit the distribution pattern of a long-tail effect in all three aspects mentioned above. In terms of environmental pollution, for some types of IPs, the individual performance of IPs in the head part of the model is more prominent. For other types of IPs, the cumulative results caused by IPs in the tail part of the model should be of concern. The PGD of IPs is closely related to their types. There are also obvious differences in the PGD of IPs in eastern and western China. Based on detailed discussion of the research results, at the end, policy implications are provided for the government to make decisions on the green development of IPs.