Research On The Ecological Innovation Effect Of China’s Low-carbon City Pilot Policy

Under the background of the increasingly significant negative effects of global warming,reducing greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide has become an urgent task.As a responsible major country,China has pledged to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.Hence,the National Development and Reform Commission of China initiated the low-carbon city pilot policy in 2010,requiring all pilot cities to explore low-carbon development mode and encourage low-carbon technological innovation,which coincides with the goal of improving the level of ecological innovation.However,whether low-carbon city policies can stimulate ecological innovation effect is not only a question that lacks theoretical discussion,but also empirical evidence support.Based on this,this paper uses panel data of 208 cities in China from 2006 to 2015 to evaluate its evolution characteristics,Differences-in-Difference model and the Mediation analysis model with ecological innovation as the explained variable,low-carbon urban pilot policy virtual variable as explanatory variable,city location,city size and city type as regulating variable,general innovation investment,industrial structure characteristic and the green consumption willingness as intermediary variables,plus a series of control variables,to empirically examine the impact of low-carbon city policies on the level of ecological innovation and the possible mediating mechanism,and analyze the regional heterogeneity of policy effects.This paper includes seven chapters.The first chapter is the introduction,which briefly describes the background,significance,research contents,research methods,and introduces the possible innovations.The second chapter is the literature review.The third chapter mainly starts from the theoretical level and analyzes the internal logic,main mechanism and regional heterogeneity of the impact of low-carbon city policies on ecological innovation based on relevant cases from theoretical level.The fourth chapter explains the data source,variable selection and model construction of the empirical research.The fifth chapter mainly uses the methods of dual difference model and mediating effect model to verify the impact of low-carbon city policy on ecological innovation,examine the main mechanism of the impact of low-carbon city policy on ecological innovation and analyze its regional heterogeneity.Chapter six is the conclusion and discussion.The results show that:(1)Low carbon pilot policy can improve the level of ecological innovation in pilot areas,and this conclusion remains true after robustness tests,such as sample replacement,placebo and propensity score matching.(2)There are three significant transmission mechanisms for the impact of low-carbon pilot policy on ecological innovation,that is,the general innovation input including innovation funds and talent supply,the industrial structure characteristics covering the advanced degree,reasonable degree and distortion degree of industrial structure,and the residents’ willingness to consume green in the field of transportation.(3)There is regional heterogeneity in the eco-innovation effect of low-carbon pilot policy.Specifically,low-carbon pilot policy only significantly improves the level of ecological innovation in eastern and central cities,but has no significant impact on western cities.Compared with small cities,low-carbon pilot policy has a greater impact on ecological innovation level in big cities.Compared with resource-based cities,the eco-innovation level of non-resource-based cities is more significantly affected by low-carbon city policies.After further subdividing resource-based cities into three categories: growth,maturity and decline,it is found that low-carbon pilot policy only plays a significant and positive role in the mature resource-based cities.