Can Low-Carbon City Pilot Policies Reduce Environmental Pollution? Evidence From Prefecture-Level Data in China

Abstract

Based on the second batch of low-carbon city pilot policies in 2013 as a quasi-natural experiment, this study adopts the panel data of 212 cities in China from 2007 to 2017, and uses the difference-in-differences model (DID) to carry out a policy evaluation of the pollution reduction and emission reduction effects of the low-carbon pilot policies and further analyzes the transmission mechanism. Based on the DID method, the actual impacts of the government's low-carbon call policy and low-carbon governance policy on the urban ecological environment are examined. It is found that compared with non-pilot cities, low-carbon governance construction in low-carbon pilot cities significantly reduces pollutant emissions in the region. Analysis of the transmission mechanism reveals that urban low-carbon governance strengthens the strength of environmental policies and reduces urban carbon and pollutant emissions through the low-carbon treatment of urban waste and the low-carbon industrial structure. The test of regional heterogeneity found that the effect of pollution reduction and emission reduction is more significant in the eastern cities, high population concentrated cities and more economically developed cities. The results are still significant after replacing the explanatory variables with sulphur dioxide content and excluding extreme outliers. Therefore, the emission reduction policy has a significant contribution to improving the urban environment and reducing pollution emissions.