Under the concept of green development, enterprises will face more environmental constraints. Whether government environmental regulation (ER) can effectively promote corporate environmental performance (CEP) has not yet been unified among scholars, and few studies have conducted bibliometric analysis on ER and CEP. Based on the above, this study has three purposes: first, to fill the research gap by analyzing and visualizing 72 articles on ER and CEP through Biblioshiny and VOSviewer; second, to help scholars easily understand the research development and quickly find promising research directions; and lastly, to enable the government and corporate managers gain a more comprehensive view of ER’s impacts on CEP, which can assist in policy making and business management. The research found that: (a) the number of articles and citations in the field is on the rise. China is the most academically influential country in terms of publications, citations, and collaborations. Journal of Cleaner Production is the top-ranked journal. Ramanathan R, Testa F, and Zhang Y are the top three authors. Environmental management, sustainability, and China are the most popular keywords. Collaboration between authors, institutions, and countries is relatively weak and isolated. (b) ER and CEP have three emerging clusters: Climate Change, FDI, as well as Environmental Awareness, and three core clusters: Environmental Management, Data Envelopment Analysis, and Economic Analysis. The evolution of themes shows a trend from decentralized to centralized and then back to decentralized. (c) Future research can take the Regulatory Framework, Green Technological Innovation, and Environmental Management System as breaking points.

Environmental regulation is globally recognized for its crucial role in mitigating environmental pollution and is vital for achieving the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. There is a current gap in the comprehensive overview of the significance of environmental regulation research, necessitating high-level insights. This paper aims to bridge this gap through an exhaustive bibliometric review of existing environmental regulation research. Employing bibliometric analysis, this study delineates publication trends, identifies leading journals, countries, institutions, and scholars. Utilizing VOSviewer software, we conducted a frequency and centrality analysis of keywords and visualized keyword co-occurrences. This research highlights current hotspots and central themes in the field, including “innovation”, “performance”, “economic growth”, and “pollution”. Further analysis of research trends underscores existing knowledge gaps and potential future research directions. Emerging topics for future investigation in environmental regulation include “financial constraints”, “green finance”, “green credit”, “ESG”, “circular economy”, “labor market”, “political uncertainty”, “digital transformation”, “exports” and “mediating effects”. Additionally, “quasi-natural experiments” and “machine learning” have emerged as cutting-edge research methodologies in this domain. The focus of research is shifting from analyzing the impact of environmental regulation on “innovation” to “green innovation” and from “emissions” to “carbon emissions”. This study provides a comprehensive and structured understanding, thereby guiding subsequent research in this field.

This paper aims to systematically analyze the current state of plastic waste legal supervision in China and to propose a vision for future governance frameworks. In recent years, along with the vigorous rise of emerging industries such as the express delivery industry and takeaway services, the consumption of plastic products has increased sharply. This trend has triggered profound reflection and high vigilance on the issue of plastic waste supervision. This trend has triggered profound reflection and acute vigilance regarding the regulation of plastic waste. Although the Chinese government has initiated multiple regulatory measures and achieved certain outcomes, from a macroscopic perspective, the issue of plastic waste pollution remains grave, and the relevant legal and regulatory system presents a complex situation with limited enforcement efficacy. Hence, it is exceptionally urgent and significant to deeply explore and formulate legislative strategies aimed at alleviating and regulating plastic waste pollution. This paper is dedicated to systematically analyzing the current state of plastic waste legal supervision from both international and domestic dimensions, and meticulously outlining the regulatory framework for plastic waste governance in China. Through the application of legal norm research methods, this paper dissects the flaws and challenges existing in the current governance mechanisms and further conducts a comparative study of the successful practices in this field in developed countries like the United States, with the intention of drawing valuable experiences. On this basis, this paper not only offers a forward-looking outlook on China’s future legislative tendencies in plastic waste pollution but also innovatively proposes a series of new insights and recommendations. These explorations aim to provide a more solid theoretical foundation and practical guidance for the governance approach to plastic waste pollution in China, promote the improvement and enhancement of the enforcement effectiveness of environmental regulations, and thereby effectively confront the global challenge of plastic pollution.