Whether the agricultural energy rebound offsets the governance effectiveness of the China's natural resource audit policy?

Due to the absence of a Chinese agricultural environmental trading market and the national government's "dual carbon" goal, government audit reform has been an important central government tool to ensure parallel economic and environmental performances and promote the green transformation of agriculture; however, in practice, the energy rebound effect may offset this effort. Based on panel data from 206 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2019, this study took China's leading official accountability audit of natural resources (LOAANR) pilot as a standard natural experiment to explore the policy effects and action paths of LOAANR on the agricultural direct energy rebound (DAER) and the indirect energy rebound (IAER), for which a spatial difference-in-difference (SDID) model was used. The results show that the LOAANR resulted in an agricultural energy rebound (AER) in the pilot cities and also had positive spillover on the AER in neighboring cities through demonstration, imitation, and training effects. It was also found that this effect was strongest in developed and agricultural non-focus cities. Finally, the mechanism test found that the LOAANR positively promoted AER in the pilot cities and negatively affected the AER in neighboring cities through agricultural energy efficiency (ATFEE). Therefore, several policy recommendations that can refine the LOAANR policy audit checklist and promote the green transformation of agriculture were presented.