The Low-Carbon City Pilot Policy and Urban Land Use Efficiency: A Policy Assessment from China

Against the backdrop of severe global warming, the low-carbon city pilot policy, with carbon emission reduction as its main objective, is an important initiative for China to fulfil its international commitment to carbon emission reduction and promote a green and low-carbon development strategy. However, none of the literature has yet evaluated whether the pilot low-carbon city policy promotes urban land use efficiency as a policy effect. In view of this, this paper measures urban land use efficiency from a low-carbon perspective using a global reference super-efficiency SBM model based on data from 186 prefecture-level cities in China from 2005–2017, and subsequently constructs a difference-in-differences method to test the true impact of low-carbon city pilot policies on urban land use efficiency and carbon emissions, and uses a propensity score matching method to test its robustness. It is found that: (1) the average level of urban land use efficiency in China is low and on a downward trend; (2) overall, cities are predominantly low-efficiency cities, with only the high-efficiency cities in Guangdong Province showing spatial agglomeration; and (3) the low-carbon city pilot policy reduces carbon emissions while also negatively affecting urban land use efficiency. Accordingly, this paper puts forward corresponding policy recommendations.