Abstract
The question of how to achieve the sustainable development of resource-based cities has been a major concern for the whole world. In response, the Chinese government has introduced the National Sustainable Development Planning of Resource-Based Cities Policy (SDPRP) to address sustainable development issues in resource-based cities. However, few studies have evaluated the environmental effects of the implementation of the SDPRP. Therefore, difference-in-differences (DID) and mediation effect models were applied to investigate the impact of the SDPRP on pollution emission intensity using balanced panel data for 270 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2018. The statistical results reveal that the SDPRP significantly reduced pollution emission intensity. Robustness test results showed that the conclusions are robust. Furthermore, the inhibitory effect of the SDPRP on pollution emission intensity increased year after year. We also found that the SDPRP can reduce pollution emission intensity by facilitating technological innovation, accelerating digital transformation, and improving human capital level, in which the role of human capital is stronger, while the role of digital transformation is weaker. The heterogeneity results suggest that compared with mature resource-based cities, the SDPRP had a stronger inhibitory effect on the pollution emission intensity in declining resource-based cities. However, the impact of the SDPRP on pollution emission intensities in growing resource-based cities was significant, while it was not significant in regenerative resource-based cities. Similarly, the SDPRP had a significantly greater inhibitory effect on pollution emission intensity in megacities than in large cities, while it increased the pollution emission intensity in small- and medium-sized cities.
Highlights
Introduction published maps and institutional affilChina’s rapid economic and social development could not have been achieved without the support of abundant natural resources [1]
An additional important prerequisite for the use of the DID method is that the experimental and control groups satisfy the assumption of parallel trends
We found that human capital had the strongest mediation effect, followed by technological innovation, while digital transformation was the weakest, implying that the Sustainable Development Planning of Resource-Based Cities Policy (SDPRP) was most effective in reducing pollution emission intensity by improving human capital levels while improving digital transformation has a more limited effect
Summary
China’s rapid economic and social development could not have been achieved without the support of abundant natural resources [1]. As suppliers of basic energy and important raw materials, resource-based cities have provided most of the resources and energy needed for China’s economic development based on their resource endowments [2,3]. Since the reform and opening up in 1978, resource-based cities have produced 52.9 billion tons of raw coal, 5.5 billion tons of crude oil, 5.8 billion tons of iron ore, and 2 billion cubic meters of timber. In order to speed up economic development, change the management system and policies in production that were not in line with production development and build up a market economy system under socialism, the Chinese government implemented a policy of internal reform and external opening up, namely reform and opening up, in. During the First Five-Year Plan period, 53 out of 156 national key construction projects were laid out in resource-based cities, and the amount of investment received iations.
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