Assessing the nexus between green investment and low-carbon development of the transportation industry: does industrial structure and renewable energy matter?

Abstract

Based on the background of comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development, this paper selects panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2000 to 2019, uses the panel fixed effects model and panel threshold effect model, and discusses the nonlinear correlation mechanism between green investment, industrial structure, renewable energy, and low-carbon development of the transportation industry. The results show that, firstly, industrial structure and renewable energy can significantly promote the low-carbon development of the transportation industry, while green investment has a restraining effect on it (the main reason is that currently its scale is small and its investment in the transportation industry is relatively low). Secondly, industrial structure and renewable energy have a negative moderating and threshold effect in the process of green investment restraining low-carbon development of the transportation industry. Thirdly, these threshold effects have obvious regional heterogeneity characteristics. Based on this, decision-makers should not only continue to expand the scale of green investment and optimize resource allocation but also fully utilize the threshold characteristics of industrial structure and renewable energy in different regions to develop different strategies and achieve the promotion of green investment in low-carbon development of the transportation industry as soon as possible.