环境治理是最为重要的公共政策问题之一。为降低环境污染与温室气体排放，中央政府出台了一系列的制度改革与政策举措。然而，作为这些举措的目标，微观经济主体会在环境冲击与环境政策下采取适应性行为，这些行为会导致气候适应与气候减缓间的困境、扭曲环境政策的本意效果、削弱中央政府的环保努力成效。基于翔实的微观数据与严谨的识别设计，分析家庭、企业、地方政府等经济主体的适应行为，对于有效应对气候挑战与开展环境治理具有重要意义。为此，本文沿家庭对气候变化的短期与长期适应，以及企业对环境政策的短期与长期适应两条主线，全面认识微观经济主体的适应行为。综合而言，本文的政策启示在于，在进行自上而下的环境政策设计时，应充分将目标主体的适应性反应考虑在内。不然，相应政策将导致巨大的福利损失、难以实现预期的环境治理效果。

Environmental governance is one of the most important public policy issues. To reduce environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, the central government has introduced a series of institutional reforms and policy measures. However, as the targets of these measures, microeconomic agents will adopt adaptive behaviors under environmental shocks and policies, which can lead to dilemmas between climate adaptation and mitigation, distort the intended effects of policies, and weaken the effectiveness of the central government’s efforts. Based on detailed microdata and rigorous identification designs, analyzing the adaptive behaviors of economic agents such as households, firms, and local governments is pivotal for effectively addressing climate challenges and carrying out environmental governance. Therefore, this thesis aims to comprehensively understand the adaptive behaviors of microeconomic agents along two main lines: the short-term and long-term adaptation of households to climate change, and the short-term and long-term adaptation of firms to environmental policies.Firstly, based on high-frequency electricity consumption data, this thesis studies the impact of short-term heat shocks and long-term warming on the electricity adaptation and adaptation equipment adoption of households in the Yangtze River Delta region and further explores the urban-rural distribution effect. The results show that short-term extreme heat significantly increases residents’ adaptive electricity consumption, and urban residents possess much higher adaptation capabilities than rural residents. Moreover, long-term climate warming significantly promotes the adoption of adaptive equipment by residents, with no significant urban-rural differences. Further analysis suggests that the income gap between urban and rural areas is an essential mechanism for explaining the inequality in short-term climate adaptation. In the long term, rural residents have faster income growth compared to urban residents, and this catch-up effect leads rural residents to achieve sufficient adoption.Secondly, this thesis focuses on the second round of central environmental protection inspections and examines the local short-term strategic adaptation to vertical regulation. The results show that local production activities significantly increase in the 1-6 weeks before the inspection team’s arrival. Once the inspection team is on-site, local production immediately decreases. After the inspection team leaves, production activities gradually rebound. Through such adaptive responses, localities both reduce the risk of environmental non-compliance and avoid economic losses as much as possible. This short-term adaptation is widespread across industries but is particularly evident in the industrial sector. Mechanism analysis indicates that both the motivation and ability of local officials and firms to collude are important factors. For officials nearing retirement or promotion, the degree of strategic adaptation in their jurisdiction is lower. For local governments with a lower level of integrity, the degree of strategic adaptation in their jurisdiction is higher. This result highlights the agent role of local governments in inducing strategic adaptation.Finally, this thesis analyzes the impact of the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (APPCAP) on the long-term adaptation of firms. This thesis manually collects the PM10 reduction targets of the APPCAP in 337 cities across China and combines them with the firm registration dataset to examine the impact of environmental regulations on firm dynamics- entry, exit, and net entry. We carefully consider the production linkages between sectors in identification. The results show that the APPCAP significantly reduces the number of “high pollution, high energy consumption” firms entering the local market and has spillover effects on non-target industries through the production network. Furthermore, environmental regulation in the eastern region significantly increases the number of two-high firms entering the western region, indicating that differences in regional regulatory intensity and environmental endowments have led to the cross-regional transfer of polluting firms. This thesis demonstrates that strict environmental regulation at the national level will reshape the industrial structure within regions and the inter-regional industrial layout.In summary, the policy implication of this thesis is that in designing top-down environmental policies, the adaptive responses of target subjects should be prudently considered. Otherwise, the corresponding policies will lead to significant welfare losses and fail to achieve the expected environmental governance effects.