Innovation-Driven Development and Urban Land Low-Carbon Use Efficiency: A Policy Assessment from China

Abstract

Improving the low-carbon utilization efficiency of urban land is crucial to the low-carbon transformation and sustainable development of China and the world economy. Innovation-driven development, especially the construction of National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zones (NIIDZs), is an important measure to realize the low-carbon transformation of urban land use and sustainable economic development in China. However, previous studies have neglected to study the impact of the construction of NIIDZs on the low-carbon utilization efficiency of urban land. Based on a theoretical analysis and using the panel data of 283 cities in China from 2006 to 2019, we took NIIDZ construction in China as a quasi-natural experiment and adopted the progressive difference-in-differences method (DID) to evaluate the impact and action mechanism of NIIDZ construction on urban land low-carbon utilization efficiency. We found that NIIDZ construction can significantly promote the improvement of the low-carbon utilization efficiency of urban land, and a series of robustness analysis results support this research conclusion. With the passage of time, this kind of promotion effect shows a trend of increasing fluctuation. NIIDZ construction mainly improves the low-carbon utilization efficiency of urban land by promoting green technology innovation and generating economies of scale. In addition, compared with eastern cities, small-scale cities and resource-based cities, the promotion effect of NIIDZ construction in central and western cities, large cities, and non-resource-based cities is more obvious. This study provides a theoretical basis and practical reference for the low-carbon utilization of urban land from the perspective of innovation in China.