Spatial Spillover Effects of Directed Technical Change on Urban Carbon Intensity, Based on 283 Cities in China from 2008 to 2019

Abstract

Technical change essentially drives regional social and economic development, and how technical change influences the regional sustainable development of the ecological environment is also of concern. However, technical change is not always neutral, so how does directed technical change affect urban carbon intensity? Is there a spatial spillover effect between these two? In order to answer these above questions, this article first explores the relationship between directed technical change and carbon intensity through the spatial Durbin model; then, it separately analyses whether the relationship between the two in low-carbon and non-low-carbon cities will differ; finally, we performed a robustness test by replacing weights, replacing the explained variable with a lag of one period, and replacing the explained variable. The conclusions are as follows: (1) There is a positive spatial correlation between the carbon intensity of Chinese cities—that is, there is a positive interaction between the carbon intensity of local cities and of neighboring cities. For every 1% change in the carbon intensity of neighboring cities, the carbon intensity of local cities changes by 0.1027% in the same direction. (2) The directed technical change has a significant inhibitory effect on urban carbon intensity, whether in local cities or neighboring cities. However, it is worth mentioning that the direct negative effect is greater in local cities than in neighboring cities. (3) The directed technical change in low-carbon cities has a stronger inhibitory effect on carbon intensity, with a direct effect coefficient of −0.5346 and an indirect effect coefficient of −0.2616. Due to less green policy support in non-low-carbon cities, the inhibitory effect of directed technical change on carbon intensity is weakened; even if the direct effects and indirect effects are superimposed, it is only −0.0510 rather than −0.7962 for low-carbon cities.

Analyzing the threshold effect of environmental regulation and logistics industry agglomeration on road green logistics efficiency: A case study in China

“…The government implements environmental policy, and forms moderation with energy conservation and emission reduction behavior of logistics enterprises (Cai et al, 2020;Zhang & Ke, 2022). The direct impact of ERs on industrial efficiency is limited (Liu & Guan, 2017;Wu et al, 2022), as mediating factors are required to influence efficiency (Amaya et al, 2021).…”

Study on the Spatial Characteristics and Spillover Effects of Carbon Emissions in the Yangtze River (Main Stream) Basin

“…As the Chinese economy enters a new normal, the concept, mode, and pace of development are changing; many regions are actively exploring the greening and cleaning of energy use; a large number of low-carbon-development cities have emerged to actively implement low-carbon-development strategies, which effectively reduce industrial emissions, promote technological innovation, and optimize energy use efficiency, and the low-carbon policies of these cities will show a negative impact on neighboring cities (Ren et al) [25]. In addition, some scholars found that capital-saving technological changes have a markable negative impact on local and neighborhood CO 2 intensity by examining the relationship between technological innovation and CO 2 emissions, and capital-saving technological change in low-CO 2 cities has a stronger suppression of local CO 2 intensity than in non-low-CO 2 -emitting cities ((Li et al) [26]; (Zhang H and Haiqian K. [27])). Therefore, this paper proposes Hypothesis 3: Hypothesis 3.…”

The Impact of Financial Development and Green Finance on Regional Energy Intensity: New Evidence from 30 Chinese Provinces

“…Therefore, by squeezing out the environmentally friendly industries within the region and making them agglomerate to other regions, the energy intensity improvement of one province can significantly suppress the energy intensity of other provinces. In other words, the energy intensity improvement has a significant negative spatial spillover effect [62][63][64].…”