Abstract
This paper studies the impact of the implementation of smart city policy (SCP) on the development of low-carbon economy (LCE) in China. For this purpose, we developed a nonconvex meta-frontier data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to measure LCE and used the differences-in-difference (DID) analysis method in the econometric model to empirically analyze the impact of SCP on LCE, using the dataset of 230 cities from 2005 to 2018. The results show that the implementation of SCP can significantly improve the LCE of cities, and the dynamic effect test presents that the promotion of smart cities to low-carbon economy increases with time. In addition, SCP promotes the development of LCE by optimizing government functions and improving the efficiency of governance and the degree of implementation openness. But there is heterogeneity between different cities as follows: the implementation of SCP has a more significant effect on the promotion of LCE in central and western regions in China and large-scale cities and cities without strict environmental protection planning. Finally, the robustness test verifies the reliability of the experimental data again and puts forward conclusions and policy recommendations.
Highlights
Since human society entered the 21st century, the process of urbanization has developed rapidly
There are a large number of buildings with high energy consumption and repeated urban construction in the process of urbanization, and inefficient use of buildings will lead to waste of building materials and carbon emissions
Due to the low-density urban sprawl, the local government has pushed up the increase of carbon emissions in the process of urbanization [33, 34]. e population density of 30 major cities in China has declined in the past 30 years, and the urban area has expanded faster than the population has increased. e marginal per capital energy consumption of urban expansion does not decrease but increases
Summary
Since human society entered the 21st century, the process of urbanization has developed rapidly. As the most populous country in the world, China’s rapid economic development has promoted the rapid process of urbanization since reform and opening-up. By 2019, China’s urbanization rate has reached 60.6%, followed by a series of “urban diseases,” such as resource shortage, environmental pollution, and ecological imbalance [2]. In the process of urbanization, economic development has produced a lot of carbon dioxide emissions and the resulting greenhouse effect and extreme weather. How to solve the above problems and improve the environmental quality of the city and the sustainable development of the economy has been the topic of concern of scholars. LCE measurement (i) Bootstrap- DEA approach (ii) Malmquist productivity index
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