With the increasing attention paid to environmental protection and sustainable development in various countries worldwide, the relationship between local government competition and environmental governance has become more subtle and complex. This paper provides new insight into their relationship based on public value theory and media sentiment perspective. Utilizing panel data from 2012 to 2019 in 216 cities in China, this study integrated Data Envelopment Analysis, Conflicting Attitudes Model, Computer-Aided Text Analysis, and machine learning-based sentiment analysis, as well as nonlinear mediation model to empirically test the relationships among local governments’ competition pressure, public value conflict, media sentiments, and environmental governance performance. The study found that: (1) Competition pressure and environmental governance performance exist in a “U-curved” relationship. (2) The core mechanism of the above relationship lies in the mediating role of public value conflict. Within a specific range, the public value conflict faced by local governments increases as competition pressure increases. This conflict would push local governments into a dilemma and induce them to commit misconduct. However, when competition pressure exceeds this range, the public value conflict faced by local governments will be weakened, leading environmental governance performance to rebound. (3) Negative media sentiments significantly alleviate the negative impact of public value conflict on environmental governance performance. This study helps researchers and policymakers recognize government competition’s influence on environmental governance from a public value perspective, with further exploration and confirmation of the moderating role of media sentiments. It also provides theoretical and policy enlightenment for rethinking the behavior logic of local government and solving the dilemma of local government environmental governance.
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