Does technology innovation reduce haze pollution? An empirical study based on urban innovation index in China

Abstract

Haze pollution is one of the most concerned environmental issue, it is of great significance to control haze pollution without affecting economic development. Using the panel data composed of PM2.5 concentration and other data from 278 cities in China between 2003 to 2016, this paper empirically investigates the impact of urban innovation on haze pollution and its transmission mechanism. Based on the fixed effect model, the research finds that the increase of urban innovation significantly reduced haze pollution. The result still holds after dealing with possible endogenous problems. Energy consumption and industrial agglomeration are two important transmission channels through which urban innovation affects haze pollution. Furthermore, time heterogeneity analysis shows that the negative effect of urban innovation on haze pollution increases with time. Spatial heterogeneity analysis shows that urban innovation has a greater mitigation effect on haze pollution in eastern cities than in central and western cities in China. This paper indicates that technological innovation as the main driving force for development, can provide strong support for China to achieve the aims of improving the ecological environment.

Factor market distortion, technological innovation, and environmental pollution

“…First, the results were similar to those of previous studies. Empirical results show that factor market distortion has a positive effect on environmental pollution (Lin and Chen 2018 ; Liu and Qiu 2020 ; Que et al 2018 ) and that technological innovation can effectively alleviate environmental pollution (Dinda 2018 ; He et al 2022 ; Yuan and Zhang 2020 ). Second, based on existing research, this study creatively analyzes the relationship between factor market distortion, technological innovation, and environmental pollution and discusses the intermediary effect mechanism of technological innovation in the impact of factor market distortion on environmental pollution.…”

“…Therefore, this study used the patent authorization index rather than the patent application index. Moreover, some scholars only consider invention patents as the statistical basis of patent authorization (He et al 2022 ) while ignoring the fact that other forms of patents also have utility and novelty, which can also reflect the ability of technological innovation. Based on this analysis and data availability, this study selects the total number of domestic patent authorizations to eliminate one-sidedness as a measure of technological innovation.…”

“…With the significant acceleration in the pace of innovation (Li et al 2020), technological innovation, as the main driving force for the coordinated development of the environment and economy, can provide vital support for mitigating environmental pollution (He et al 2022). Technological innovation provides green technology for production, promotes the transformation and upgrading of industrial structures, realizes the greening of production modes, and reduces the consumption of natural resources per output unit, thus improving energy utilization, achieving substantial savings, and recycling of resources, and reducing environmental pollution (Dinda 2018;He et al 2022;Yuan and Zhang 2020). Technological innovation can also improve technological progress in pollution control by increasing investments.…”

Open innovation, enterprise value and the mediating effect of ESG

“…However, technological progress contributes to implementing energy conservation and emission reduction (Zhu et al ., 2020). Reducing emissions such as SO2 and NO2 in the air, haze pollution can also be alleviated (He et al ., 2022). At the same time, whether it is the internal technological progress of the enterprise or the new technology obtained from the outside, this is a synergistic contribution to the innovation resources.…”

Exploring the nexus link of environmental technology innovation, urbanization, financial development, and energy consumption on environmental pollution: Evidence from 27 emerging economies

“…Environmental technology innovation (ENVTI) is focused on a challenged-oriented strategy to solutions that bring together a rich and efficient natural resource that underpins the application and development of environmentally friendly technologies to comprehend and pursue sustainable future development goals [ [1] , [2] , [3] ]. ENVTI could also be defined as ‘clean technology’ or ‘green’ and denotes the growth of modern technologies which seek to monitor, conserve or decrease the negative effect of some technologies on resource consumption and the environment [ 2 , 4 , 5 ]. Additionally, technological innovation can help to recover energy [ 2 , 6 ].…”