An empirical analysis of the relationship between environmental performance and sustainable e-governance in China

• The relationship between regional environmental performance and the environmental e-governance level is investigated
• The voluntary disclosure and socio-political theories are employed.
• An empirical study is conducted on China's 30 provincial governments.
• There is no significant relationship between environmental performance and environmental e-governance level.

This empirical study attempts to identify the relationship between regional environmental performance and the environmental e-governance level of local governments in China. Following the voluntary disclosure and socio-political theories, we hypothesize that environmental performance is related to the level of environmental e-governance. These two competing theories provide opposite predictions on the relationship being studied, and previous studies are largely inconclusive. Thus, in this study, we develop a two-stage procedure to investigate this relationship. In the first stage, the composite environmental performance indicator is calculated based on a generalized directional distance function. In the second stage, structural equation modeling is used to investigate the potential relationship between environmental performance and the environmental e-governance level. An empirical study is conducted on China's 30 provincial governments using 2007–2010 data. The empirical results indicate that there is no significant relationship between environmental performance and environmental e-governance level. Finally, some policy suggestions on the role of intermediary for sustainable Chinese e-governance are proposed.