How does land resource mismatch affect urban energy low-carbon transition?

Abstract

Optimizing land resource allocation is an inevitable requirement for achieving urban energy low-carbon transition. This paper explores the impact mechanism of land resource mismatch on urban energy low-carbon transition by utilizing actual land market transaction data and panel data of 284 prefecture-level cities in China obtained from China Land Market Network using crawler technology. The results show: (1) Land resource mismatch significantly inhibits the performance of urban energy low-carbon transition, and the conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests such as replacing explanatory variables and endogeneity analysis. (2) Land resource mismatch mainly affects the urban energy low-carbon transition by inhibiting industrial structure upgrading, low-carbon technology innovation and weakening industrial agglomeration effects. (3) The disincentive effect of land resource mismatch is more pronounced in resource-based cities, cities with low cleaning potential and small-scale cities. (4) Hard constraints on local governments' economic growth targets will strengthen the inhibitory effect of land resource mismatch on the city's energy low-carbon transition, while the environmental performance assessment mechanism will weaken the negative impact of land resource mismatch.