{"title":"Does climate policy exacerbate spatial development inequality? Quasi-experimental evidence from China","authors":"Xiaoke Zhu , Weigang Liu , Jian Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.scs.2025.106166","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study aims to examine the causal relationship between climate policy and spatial development inequality within cities. To this end, we leverage the temporal and spatial variations in the implementation of the low-carbon city pilot initiative (LCCPI) to perform a staggered difference-in-difference (DID) estimation. Our estimated results demonstrate that the LCCPI is associated with an approximate 4.4 % reduction in the Gini coefficient for nighttime light intensity. Our findings are robust to alternative measures and different specifications. Further mechanism analyses reveal that the LCCPI operates by narrowing the green innovation gap and improving the factor allocation. Notably, we observe a more pronounced decrease in spatial development inequality in resource-dependent and high-marketization cities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48659,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Cities and Society","volume":"120 ","pages":"Article 106166"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5000,"publicationDate":"2025-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sustainable Cities and Society","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210670725000447","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CONSTRUCTION & BUILDING TECHNOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This study aims to examine the causal relationship between climate policy and spatial development inequality within cities. To this end, we leverage the temporal and spatial variations in the implementation of the low-carbon city pilot initiative (LCCPI) to perform a staggered difference-in-difference (DID) estimation. Our estimated results demonstrate that the LCCPI is associated with an approximate 4.4 % reduction in the Gini coefficient for nighttime light intensity. Our findings are robust to alternative measures and different specifications. Further mechanism analyses reveal that the LCCPI operates by narrowing the green innovation gap and improving the factor allocation. Notably, we observe a more pronounced decrease in spatial development inequality in resource-dependent and high-marketization cities.
期刊介绍:
Sustainable Cities and Society (SCS) is an international journal that focuses on fundamental and applied research to promote environmentally sustainable and socially resilient cities. The journal welcomes cross-cutting, multi-disciplinary research in various areas, including:
1. Smart cities and resilient environments;
2. Alternative/clean energy sources, energy distribution, distributed energy generation, and energy demand reduction/management;
3. Monitoring and improving air quality in built environment and cities (e.g., healthy built environment and air quality management);
4. Energy efficient, low/zero carbon, and green buildings/communities;
5. Climate change mitigation and adaptation in urban environments;
6. Green infrastructure and BMPs;
7. Environmental Footprint accounting and management;
8. Urban agriculture and forestry;
9. ICT, smart grid and intelligent infrastructure;
10. Urban design/planning, regulations, legislation, certification, economics, and policy;
11. Social aspects, impacts and resiliency of cities;
12. Behavior monitoring, analysis and change within urban communities;
13. Health monitoring and improvement;
14. Nexus issues related to sustainable cities and societies;
15. Smart city governance;
16. Decision Support Systems for trade-off and uncertainty analysis for improved management of cities and society;
17. Big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence applications and case studies;
18. Critical infrastructure protection, including security, privacy, forensics, and reliability issues of cyber-physical systems.
19. Water footprint reduction and urban water distribution, harvesting, treatment, reuse and management;
20. Waste reduction and recycling;
21. Wastewater collection, treatment and recycling;
22. Smart, clean and healthy transportation systems and infrastructure;