Smart cities and urban household carbon emissions: A perspective on smart city development policy in China

Abstract

Smart cities have the potential to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality, but empirical evidence regarding the effect of smart city policies on carbon emissions is limited. In this novel study, we investigate the effect of China's smart city policy on household daily consumption and carbon emissions. The empirical analysis is based on a difference-in-differences regression, in which the dependent variable is the household indirect carbon emissions estimated based on the consumer lifestyle approach and a dataset of 201 Chinese cities between 2010 and 2018. The main findings are as follows. First, the smart city policy significantly reduces household indirect carbon emissions, and the reduction is greater when the policy pilot region includes the whole city rather than only certain subareas. Second, the mechanisms through which the smart city influences household indirect carbon emissions are mainly the reductions in transportation- and education-related emissions resulting from developments in smart technology. Third, the above effects last for years, and they are regionally heterogeneous and more significant in the cities of eastern China. The findings in this paper suggest that smart cities can potentially achieve city sustainability by promoting greener consumption behavior.