Impact of Low-Carbon City Construction Policy on Green Innovation Performance in China

ABSTRACT

This research constructs a double difference model to test the impact of LCCP on green innovation by using urban panel data of 276 cities in China from 2005 to 2019. Findings show that LCCP effectively improves the level of green innovation performance, and the conclusion is robust. Its effect is more obvious in cities with high scientific and educational levels as well as big cities or eastern cities of the country. LCCP enhances the performance of urban green innovation by driving technological innovation, upgrading the industrial structure, and optimizing urban public services. This research is significant for realizing high-quality economic development.

KEYWORDS:

• low-carbon city construction policy
• green innovation performance
• quasi-natural experiment

JEL:

• O38
• R58

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Chun-Ping Chang for his guidance on an earlier version of this article. We are also grateful to the anonymous referees for helpful suggestions. Kai Tang is grateful to China’s National Social Science Foundation Project (21BJY229) and Project of Huamao Finance Research Institute of Henan University of Finance and Economics (HYK-2021030). We are solely responsible for any errors and omissions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).