Does higher education development facilitate carbon emissions reduction in China

Based on the data of 31 provinces in China during 2004–2015 and the models of panel threshold regression and panel quantile regression, this paper investigates the impact of China’s higher education on regional carbon emissions. The results indicate that there exists threshold effect of both China’s higher education scale and quality on regional carbon emissions per capita. Specifically, in terms of higher education scale, its further progress may facilitate the positive effect on carbon emissions per capita when technology is above threshold. As for higher education quality, its further growth may moderate the positive effect on carbon emissions per capita when income exceeds threshold; it also can promote its constrained effect on carbon emissions per capita when exceeding the technology threshold; and the continuous improvement of higher education quality may help to reduce carbon emissions per capita. Besides, the positive impact of higher education scale on carbon emissions per capita appears smaller in regions with more carbon emissions per capita; meanwhile, only in the regions with larger carbon emissions per capita, may higher education quality promote carbon emissions per capita, while the curbing impact of technology level is relatively constant among different regions with various carbon emissions.