Whether the Establishment of National High-Tech Zones Can Improve Urban Air Pollution: Empirical Evidence from Prefecture-Level Cities in China

Abstract

Promoting the construction of national-level high-tech zones as green pioneer zones is a necessary condition for achieving high-quality development. Based on panel data from 254 prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2018, in this paper, the difference-in-difference (DID) is used to empirically examine the influence effect of the establishment of national high-tech zones on local urban air pollution, and the spatial difference-in-difference (SDID) is used to explore its spatial spillover effect. It was found that the annual average PM2.5 concentration in cities with national high-tech zones decreased by about 1.8% compared with cities without national high-tech zones, and there was a positive spillover effect on the annual average PM2.5 concentration in nearby cities. Industrial structure upgrading and technological innovation effects are two important transmission paths for the establishment of national high-tech zones to influence urban air pollution; the heterogeneity analysis shows that the establishment of national high-tech zones has more significant implications for the improvement of air pollution in non-resource cities and less developed areas in the west, and the air pollution improvement effect of “growing” national high-tech zones is more desirable than that of “mature” national high-tech zones. Our empirical results conclude that we should continue to encourage the promotion of national high-tech zones, optimize the business environment, improve preferential policies, and design a combination of policy instruments scientifically according to local conditions in order to give full play to the effect of national high-tech zones on urban air-pollution improvement.