Evaluation Of The Effect Of Low-Carbon City Pilot Policies On The Development Of Circular Economy

At present,our country is in the stage of economic transformation,facing the dual pressure of environment and resources.In order to break the bottleneck of economic development and explore a sustainable development path,the central government has introduced a series of environmental regulatory measures,such as the pilot policy on low-carbon cities.These measures are not only conducive to tackling climate change,but can also help promote the construction of a circular economy system in cities.Taking this as a starting point,this paper analyses the causal relationship between the construction of low-carbon cities and the development of urban circular economy,which is conducive to exploring the effectiveness of environmental regulation measures and provides a reference for achieving high-quality urban economic development.Based on the panel data of 273 prefecture-level cities in China from 2009 to 2019,an urban circular economy development evaluation index system is constructed from resource reduction performance,recycling performance,pollution management performance and ecological environment performance,and a comprehensive measure of the circular economy development level of prefecture-level cities is combined with hierarchical analysis and entropy value method.On this basis,a multi-temporal doubledifference model is constructed to assess the impact of low-carbon city construction on urban circular economy development,using the second and third batches of low-carbon city pilot policies as a quasi-natural experiment.Then,based on the mediating effects model,the effects of factors such as advanced industrial structure,industrial structure rationalization,green technology innovation and energy consumption structure upgrading on the level of urban circular economy development were examined,while heterogeneity analysis was conducted on the differences in policy implementation effects from the perspectives of city size and the degree of emphasis on scientific and technological research and development.The study found that:(1)The low-carbon city pilot policy has a significant impact on improving the development level of the urban circular economy.After passing the propensity score matching-double difference test(PSM-DID),parallel trend test,and a series of robustness tests,the benchmark regression results are still significant,and the effect of the third batch of pilot policies is better than that of the second batch.(2)It is found in the mechanism analysis that the pilot policies for low-carbon cities are mainly aimed at accelerating the upgrading of industrial structure(including both rationalization and upgrading of industrial structure),accelerating green technology innovation,and optimizing the energy consumption structure,thereby improving the development level of the urban circular economy.(3)There is significant heterogeneity in the pilot policies for low-carbon cities.Influenced by factors such as the foundation of regional green transformation and the strength of policy support,the policy effect is more significant in Type II large cities,Type I large cities,megacities,and regions with a high proportion of scientific and technological financial expenditure.Based on the above research results,this paper suggests that we should further expand the pilot of low-carbon cities,improve the construction of a low-carbon industrial system and increase investment in technological innovation,give full play to its role in promoting the development of urban circular economy,improve resource utilization efficiency while addressing climate change,and help China’s economy move steadily and farreaching on the road of sustainable development.