A spatiotemporal analysis of carbon lock-in effect in China’s provincial construction industry

Abstract

Carbon neutrality in construction industry is one of the most important parts in the process of realizing national carbon neutrality. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the high-carbon dependency pattern of regional construction industry in the process of economic development. This study quantified carbon lock-in effect in provincial construction industry from the four dimensions of technology, environment, economy, and society. Based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China' s mainland from 2000 to 2018, this study examined the carbon lock-in effect in provincial construction industry by using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method. Furthermore, this study uncovered the spatial-temporal evolutionary process and dependence pathways of carbon lock-in in provincial construction industry by adopting the panel data set theory. The results show that: (1) The six high-carbon paths that drive carbon lock-in effect in provincial construction industry can be categorized into four typical types: Institutional lock-in, industrial lock-in, technology lock-in, and social lock-in. Improvement of industrialization level, growth of residents' consumption, rapid expansion of urbanization, and lack of environmental regulation are the main driving factors leading to the high carbon lock-in of the construction industry. (2) The four lowcarbon paths of the construction industry can be categorized into three types: low urbanization and low innovation, high technology investment and low innovation, and high technology investment and high innovation. (3) There exists great temporal and spatial heterogeneity in the carbon lock-in effect of provincial construction industry. The carbon lock-in effect has been strengthened while the low carbon model has been weakened over time. Moreover, there are great differences in the high-carbon dependence pathways between different provinces. The results of this research are helpful for formulating the carbon peaking time map, road map, and implementation map in the construction sectors at the local level, and are of great significance for realizing the regional independent exploration of low-carbon development path and the realization of the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals.

Can Digital Finance Enable China’s Industrial Carbon Unlocking under Environmental Regulatory Constraints? Joint Tests of Regression Analysis and Qualitative Comparative Analysis

“…However, traditional fsQCA lags behind cross-sectional data. Drawing on Hong et al [27], we extend traditional fsQCA to dynamic fsQCA for panel data, to explore the linkage effect of the DF and ER factors behind the differences in provincial ICUE from the spatial-temporal dimension. The relevant indices are shown in Equations ( 8)- (10).…”

“…The mainstream views are technical, institutional, industrial, and behavioral CLIs. In addition, based on QCA method and cross sectional data, Hong et al [27] investigated some economic and policy factors, concluding that industrialization, urbanization, increasing consumption, and lack of ERs led to the high CLI in the construction industry.…”

“…However, few scholars have focused on and applied this framework to solve the carbon unlocking problem. Although Hong et al [27] attempted to use the TOE framework initially, they only assessed the basic carbon emissions indicator and used cross sectional data, failing to capture the full impact of decarbonization. Therefore, based on the TOE framework, we can systematically construct a comprehensive index of carbon unlocking from three dimensions-technology, organization, and environment-and then carry out empirical analysis.…”