{"title":"Towards sustainable development: assessing the effects of low-carbon city pilot policy on residents’ welfare","authors":"Wentao Wang, Dezhi Li, Shenghua Zhou, Zizhe Han","doi":"10.1007/s10668-024-05373-z","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>To realize low-carbon transition and pursue sustainable development, China’s central government formulated the low-carbon city pilot (LCCP) policy. Current studies focus primarily on the effect of the policy at the macro level of the cities, including economic, industrial, technological, environmental dimensions. So far, few has looked at the effect of the LCCP policy on residents’ welfare. To address this gap, this study treats the LCCP policy as an exogenous policy shock and employs the Difference-in-Differences model to examine its influence on residents’ welfare from the perspective of ecological welfare performance (EWP). Additionally, this study integrates the concept of quality of life into the EWP evaluation system to provide a comprehensive reflection of residents’ welfare. The results demonstrate that the LCCP policy significantly increase EWP in pilot cities, with a series of robustness tests support this finding. Besides, mechanism examination indicates that the LCCP policy enhances EWP through optimizing industrial structure, promoting low-carbon technological innovation, and increasing digital economy. Moreover, heterogeneous results reveal a significant increase of EWP in eastern cities, non-resource-based cities, and cities with high government environmental governance intensity due to the LCCP policy. This study empirically confirms the positive role of the LCCP policy in improving residents’ welfare, provides evidence for synergistic development of other countries seeking to advance low-carbon transition alongside improvements in residents’ welfare.</p>","PeriodicalId":540,"journal":{"name":"Environment, Development and Sustainability","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Environment, Development and Sustainability","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-024-05373-z","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
To realize low-carbon transition and pursue sustainable development, China’s central government formulated the low-carbon city pilot (LCCP) policy. Current studies focus primarily on the effect of the policy at the macro level of the cities, including economic, industrial, technological, environmental dimensions. So far, few has looked at the effect of the LCCP policy on residents’ welfare. To address this gap, this study treats the LCCP policy as an exogenous policy shock and employs the Difference-in-Differences model to examine its influence on residents’ welfare from the perspective of ecological welfare performance (EWP). Additionally, this study integrates the concept of quality of life into the EWP evaluation system to provide a comprehensive reflection of residents’ welfare. The results demonstrate that the LCCP policy significantly increase EWP in pilot cities, with a series of robustness tests support this finding. Besides, mechanism examination indicates that the LCCP policy enhances EWP through optimizing industrial structure, promoting low-carbon technological innovation, and increasing digital economy. Moreover, heterogeneous results reveal a significant increase of EWP in eastern cities, non-resource-based cities, and cities with high government environmental governance intensity due to the LCCP policy. This study empirically confirms the positive role of the LCCP policy in improving residents’ welfare, provides evidence for synergistic development of other countries seeking to advance low-carbon transition alongside improvements in residents’ welfare.
期刊介绍:
Environment, Development and Sustainability is an international and multidisciplinary journal covering all aspects of the environmental impacts of socio-economic development. It is also concerned with the complex interactions which occur between development and environment, and its purpose is to seek ways and means for achieving sustainability in all human activities aimed at such development. The subject matter of the journal includes the following and related issues:
-mutual interactions among society, development and environment, and their implications for sustainable development
-technical, economic, ethical and philosophical aspects of sustainable development
-global sustainability - the obstacles and ways in which they could be overcome
-local and regional sustainability initiatives, their practical implementation, and relevance for use in a wider context
-development and application of indicators of sustainability
-development, verification, implementation and monitoring of policies for sustainable development
-sustainable use of land, water, energy and biological resources in development
-impacts of agriculture and forestry activities on soil and aquatic ecosystems and biodiversity
-effects of energy use and global climate change on development and sustainability
-impacts of population growth and human activities on food and other essential resources for development
-role of national and international agencies, and of international aid and trade arrangements in sustainable development
-social and cultural contexts of sustainable development
-role of education and public awareness in sustainable development
-role of political and economic instruments in sustainable development
-shortcomings of sustainable development and its alternatives.