Research on the impact of multi-dimensional urbanization on China's carbon emissions under the background of COP21

Abstract

The Paris Agreement (COP21) further defines the concept of global climate governance as low-carbon green development. Urbanization and carbon emissions are two major characteristics of modern Chinese economic and social development. China's new urbanization requires not only the realization of population, the harmonization of land and economic urbanization also requires the protection of the ecological environment in the process of urbanization to achieve green and low-carbon development. Therefore, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore the influencing factors of carbon emissions and compare their differences based on spatial econometric models and from various perspectives of urbanization. Empirical findings of the study are as follows: (1) The Moran's I indexes are all above 0.5, the spatial effects of regional carbon emissions are significant, and it cannot be ignored. Similarly, it shows that the optimal model is a spatial doubly model with dual fixed effects. (2) Direct effects of population, land, and economic urbanization are positive. Whereas, indirect effect about population urbanization is negative, but its total effect is same direction change with carbon emissions. Indirect and total effect of land urbanization are negative, indirect effect of economic urbanization is small and total effect is significantly positive. (3) Per capita GDP, energy intensity, and environmental regulation variables of control variables are all positive; opening to outside be positive but not obvious.