Impact of Environmental Regulation on Ecological ResilienceA Perspective of “Local-neighborhood” Effect

Under the background that the country attaches great importance to ecological civilization and green development, whether and how environmental regulation affects ecological resilience is worthy of more discussion. Based on the perspective of “local-neighborhood” effect, In this paper, 30 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in mainland China were taken as research samples, and the spatial econometric model was used to empirically analyze the impact of environmental regulation on ecological resilience and its spatial heterogeneity from 2007 to 2019, and the mediating effect of technological innovation was examined. The results are as follows. （1） Environmental regulation effectively improved local ecological resilience, and the effect of formal environmental regulation was stronger than that of informal environmental regulation. There was spatial heterogeneity in the impact of environmental regulation on local ecological resilience, that is, the eastern and central regions had a promoting effect, and the western region a significant hindering effect.（2） Technological innovation played a mediating effect in the impact of environmental regulation on ecological resilience, and it was stronger in formal environmental regulation.（3） Environmental regulation had a positive spatial spillover effect on adjacent ecological resilience, and the effect of informal environmental regulation was stronger than that of formal environmental regulation. These results provide reference for the decision-making about how to use environmental regulation to improve China’s ecological resilience.