| Global climate change has brought serious adverse effects to human society.China has actively assumed its responsibility as a major country in solving the climate change issue,and committed to the construction of China’s ecological civilization and high-quality development,and proposed the "double carbon" goal of carbon peak and carbon neutral in September 2020.On the other hand,China began to gradually build the pilot free trade zones(FTZs)in 2013 to explore the path of high-level opening to the outside world.The reform of FTZs has brought about the optimization and enhancement of resource allocation,as well as the exploration of environmental management systems and institutional changes;meanwhile,the impact of China’s FTZs on regional ecological environment has been confirmed by some studies.Therefore,the impact effect of FTZ construction on the low-carbon transformation of Chinese regions is worthy of in-depth exploration.Based on this,this paper uses the construction of free trade pilot zones as a quasi-natural experiment to analyze the impact of the construction of free trade pilot zones on regional low-carbon development performance.Firstly,the possible relationship between the two is sorted out by collating and summarizing the relevant literature at home and abroad;secondly,the current situation of China’s FTZs and the current situation of domestic carbon emission performance is analyzed,and an attempt is made to discover the intrinsic connection between China’s FTZs and carbon emission performance on this basis;and then,based on the existing studies,the influence channels of FTZ construction on regional low-carbon development performance are explored;finally.Based on the panel data of 278 cities from2007-2019,DID,PSM-DID and other econometric methods are used to empirically analyze the impact of FTZs on regional carbon emission performance from three impact channels,such as industrial structure,technological innovation,and financial deepening,and the moderating effects of foreign trade dependence,traditional infrastructure construction,and informationization level are analyzed,as well as the The heterogeneity of the effects of the construction of FTZ on regional carbon emission performance is analyzed.Through the above study,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)The establishment of the FTZ can enhance regional carbon emission performance,and the same conclusion is reached by applying DID and PSM-DID,which supports the stability of the study results.(2)From the analysis of influence channels,the construction of the FTZ has a significant effect on the carbon emission performance of a region through three influence channels.From the analysis of the moderating effect,the higher the level of traditional trade or informationization in a region,the better the carbon emission reduction effect of the establishment of the FTZ in that region;the higher the level of traditional infrastructure construction in a region,the establishment of the FTZ will be detrimental to carbon emission reduction.(3)There is an obvious heterogeneous effect of the construction of the FTZ on regional carbon emission performance.The establishment of the FTZ has a stronger effect on cities in coastal areas to improve their carbon emission performance than on cities in non-coastal areas.Similarly,compared to provincial capitals,the construction of the FTZ has a significant effect on carbon emission reduction for non-capital cities.Finally,based on the above findings,this paper proposes policy recommendations to help China achieve carbon emission reduction,promote low-carbon economic development and dual carbon goals. |
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