Does the change of official promotion assessment standards contribute to the improvement of urban environmental quality?

Li, Nan; Feng, Chen; Shi, Beibei; Kang, Rong; Wei, Wendong

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.131254

Cited by 23 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The local governments gradually showed a certain preference for fiscal governance for the construction of an ecological civilization. Local governments, under the exogenous pressure of senior government, may show certain "environmental federalism" decision-making tendencies; however, contrary to the view of "environmental federalism", it is believed that the local governments' motives to protect the regional ecological environment and improve regional energy efficiency are derived from higher government rather than immigration [25].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Chinese-Style Fiscal Decentralization, Ecological Attention of Government, and Regional Energy Intensity

Wang

et al. 2022

Energies

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The impact of Chinese-style fiscal decentralization on regional energy intensity has long been disputed by the supporters of “federal environmentalism” and those who hold “race to the bottom” views. At the same time, with the transformation of China’s development mode, the Chinese government is paying increasing attention to the protection of ecological civilization and the realization of sustainable development, and the government’s attention to the ecological environment is becoming an important factor affecting regional energy intensity. Therefore, this paper takes the fiscal decentralization and ecological attention of local governments in China as the research object and analyzes their impact mechanism on regional energy intensity. Firstly, the entropy weight method was used to measure the comprehensive score of fiscal decentralization of Chinese local governments, and the text analysis method was used to obtain the ecological attention index of Chinese provincial local governments, which was sorted into panel data of 30 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) in mainland China from 2007 to 2019. The spatial econometric model and panel threshold model are structured as the means for analyzing the impact that fiscal decentralization and the ecological attention of local governments have, respectively, on regional energy intensity targets. We obtained the following conclusions: Chinese fiscal decentralization can significantly improve the regional energy intensity, and the fiscal decentralization of a region can significantly reduce the energy intensity in nearby regions; the enhancement of ecological attention of local governments will significantly inhibit regional energy intensity, and also has a significant inhibitory effect on the energy intensity of neighboring regions. As the threshold variable—which is the ecological attention of local governments—increases and reaches a certain level, fiscal decentralization will significantly and reversely inhibit regional energy intensity, indicating that the ecological attention of local governments can moderate the distortion of fiscal decentralization with regards to regional energy efficiency.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Chinese-Style Fiscal Decentralization, Ecological Attention of Government, and Regional Energy Intensity

Wang

et al. 2022

Energies

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“…Second, with the rise of emerging technologies such as industrial robots, big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, whether technological innovation can provide new impetus for energy conservation and emission reduction has become a hot research topic (Su et al, 2020;Prasath Kumar et al, 2021;Wang K-L et al, 2021;Li N et al, 2022;Saheb et al, 2022). The improvement of cleaner production technology can reduce carbon emissions in the process of production of enterprises and reduce carbon emissions per unit of output (Zhou and Zhao, 2016;Zhou et al, 2021).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Also, Kuang et al (2022) explored the impact of green technology innovation and renewable energy investments on reducing carbon emissions and found that in the long-term technology innovation can enhance carbon performance. However, studies have also shown that technology innovations increase the risk of enterprises, and the returns to enterprises are particularly limited (Li W et al, 2022;Su and Fan, 2022). Shaikh and Randhawa (2022) found that open technological innovation can also create risks within the organization that can jeopardize the company's operations.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the effectiveness of innovative city pilots in improving urban carbon emission performance: A spatial difference-in-difference approach

Long

Tan³

et al. 2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Existing studies have focused on the impact of innovation on carbon emission performance but ignore the importance of government support for innovation. To overcome this challenge, this paper adopts a spatial difference-in-difference (DID) model to assess the impact of government support for innovation on urban carbon emission performance based on a quasi-natural experiment of innovative city pilots (ICP) in China. Using the high-resolution carbon emission data of 1 km × 1 km for 238 cities from 2008 to 2019 in China, this paper employees an extended stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) model to measure urban carbon emission performance. Our findings indicate that ICP implementation leads to a 1.3% improvement in local carbon emission performance. Meanwhile, there is a significant spatial spillover effect of ICP implementation, with a 3.3% improvement in the carbon performance of the surrounding areas. The results of the mechanism analysis suggest that government innovation support affects carbon emission performance by promoting total factor productivity improvement, green innovation, and industrial upgrading. Further analysis shows that ICP has the strongest impact on carbon performance in the eastern region, and the impact is stronger for large cities and resource-dependent cities. Finally, the paper carries out a series of robustness tests to ensure the reliability of the analytical results, including parallel trend tests, placebo tests and re-estimation of different methods. Based on the findings, this paper proposes feasible policy recommendations in terms of continuous promotion of government innovation support, regional cooperation and differentiated innovation support formulation.

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“…Thus, at least in the short-term, the implementation of environmental regulation may reduce the production efficiency and competitiveness of enterprises, which has been confirmed by Walley and Whitehead (1994), Gray and Shadbegian (2003), and other scholars. On the contrary, the "Porter hypothesis" proposed that strict and appropriate environmental regulations could improve their production efficiency through such transmission channels as innovation offset effect and optimal allocation of resources (Porter and Van der Linde, 1995;Li N et al, 2022;Peng and Zhang, 2022). In addition, there are also a few studies combining these two views that environmental regulation only plays a positive role in specific areas due to differences in policy choice timing and institutional environment (Berman and Bui, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can climate policy promote high-quality development of enterprises? Evidence from China

Cai

Huang²,

Ying³

et al. 2023

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Climate policy is of great importance for China’s climate goals of achieving peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. However, whether the climate policy can consider economic performance and achieve high-quality economic development remains to be tested. Based on the perspective of high-quality economic development, this study takes three batches of low-carbon city pilots in China as a quasi-natural experiment and uses time-varying difference-in-differences to examine the impact of climate policy on high-quality development of enterprises. The findings show that the current climate policy in general does not promote the high-quality development of enterprises, when comprehensively considering the gradually strengthening regulation intensity of pilot policy in batches. The result holds after a battery of robustness tests. Further analysis shows that the economic mechanism behind it lies in that the environmental regulation arising from the climate policy only triggers the “compliance costs effect” instead of the “innovation offset effect.” It also finds that the inhibition effect of climate policy on high-quality development is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises, small-scale enterprises, and the sample with strong local environmental law enforcement. The findings of this study would complement existing theoretical research via evaluating the effectiveness of China’s current low-carbon policy at the micro level and provide policy implications for the implementation of future climate policies so as to mitigate climate change and achieve high-quality economic development. In addition, our estimation strategy can serve as a scientific reference for similar studies in other developing countries.

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Does the change of official promotion assessment standards contribute to the improvement of urban environmental quality?

Cited by 23 publications

References 17 publications

Chinese-Style Fiscal Decentralization, Ecological Attention of Government, and Regional Energy Intensity

Chinese-Style Fiscal Decentralization, Ecological Attention of Government, and Regional Energy Intensity

Assessing the effectiveness of innovative city pilots in improving urban carbon emission performance: A spatial difference-in-difference approach

Can climate policy promote high-quality development of enterprises? Evidence from China

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