In recent years,the ecological environment quality in China has been continuously improving with unprecedented magnitude,speed,and effectiveness.The new era of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature in beautiful China has begun.Although China has made remarkable achievements in constructing ecological civilization,the structural,root cause,and trend pressures of environmental environment protection have not yet been fundamentally alleviated.The feedback from the first and second rounds of central environmental protection inspectors has also repeatedly pointed out that some local governments still have problems such as“valuing development and neglecting protection,”“neglecting and disorderly actions,”“one size fits all,”“superficial rectification,perfunctory rectification.”As China's environmental governance gradually enters a critical period of pressure accumulation and burdensome progress,while observing the effectiveness of governance,a series of deviant behaviors of local governments and the reasons behind them also deserve attention,vigilance,and reflection.

The existing research lacks awareness of the deep-seated contradictions of public values hidden behind real situations,thus failing to identify local governments' key pain points in environmental governance.Different from existing research,this book provides a new analysis of local government environmental governance issues from the perspective of multiple pressures and public value conflicts.The multiple pressures originate from the analytical approach of the“Pressurized System,”including financial pressure,performance pressure,competition pressure,and public opinion pressure borne by local governments.The public value conflict reflects the incompatibility and incommensurability between diversified public values,presenting the competition and tense relationship between diversified public values.Based on panel data from 216 cities in China,this study comprehensively utilized Data Envelopment Analysis,Computer Aided Text Analysis（CATA）,Sentiment Analysis,Conflict Reactions Model,Nonlinear Mediation and Moderation Models,and other methods to empirically analyze the relationship between multiple pressures,public value conflicts,and local governments'environmental governance efficiency.

This study draws five conclusions: The multiple pressures local governments bear can affect their environmental governance efficiency.Financial pressure,performance pressure,competition pressure,and public opinion pressure have different impacts on the environmental governance efficiency of local governments.Multiple pressures will exacerbate the public value conflicts faced by local governments in environmental governance; Public value conflicts can affect the environmental governance efficiency of local governments; Public value conflict is the mediating mechanism through which multiple pressures affect the local government's environmental governance efficiency; Vertical management of environmental protection,public participation,green technology innovation,and reputation threats can moderating the occurrence and impact of public value conflicts.

The innovation and contribution of this study are explained in the following aspects: Firstly,this study provides a new theoretical perspective for analyzing the environmental governance issues of local governments in China,which can help people understand the thorny problems faced by lo cal governments from the perspective of public value conflicts; Secondly,this study explores the triggering factors and background of public value conflicts in local government environmental governance,reveals their impact on environmental governance,and helps open up the“black box”of public value; In addition,this study found the coordinated path for public value conflicts in local government environmental governance,which has specific theoretical and practical significance for solving the environmental governance dilemma of local governments in China,and helping to improve their environmental governance performance.

Key words: Multiple Pressures; Public Value Conflicts; Local Governments; Environmental Governance Efficiency