IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v54y2022i57p6559-6579.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can government low-carbon regulation stimulate urban green innovation? Quasi-experimental evidence from China’s low-carbon city pilot policy

Author

Listed:
  • Chaofan Chen
  • Yongsheng Lin
  • Ning Lv
  • Wei Zhang
  • Yawen Sun

Abstract

Existing studies on the innovation effect of environmental regulation lack causal identification and do not distinguish between the types of innovation. This study regards China’s low-carbon city pilot policy (LCCPP) as a quasi-natural experiment and evaluates the impact of LCCPP on urban green innovation represented by green patents. We found that as a comprehensive government low-carbon regulation, LCCPP has significantly promoted urban green innovation and increased the annual average number of green invention patent applications by approximately 320, green utility model patent applications by approximately 210, and the total number of green patent applications by approximately 530. LCCPP can promote green innovation through capital allocation, structural upgrading, investment promotion, and comprehensive governance effects. Moreover, the impact of LCCPP on green innovation demonstrates heterogeneity. LCCPP has a greater positive effect on green innovation in energy conservation, waste management, and alternative energy and is more effective in stimulating green innovation in large cities, cities in developed eastern regions, and cities rich in educational resources. Our study verifies the existence of the Porter hypothesis in China on a city scale and indicates that, for developing countries, a comprehensive low-carbon regulation that combines mandatory and market-based instruments would be preferable for promoting green innovation.

Suggested Citation

  • Chaofan Chen & Yongsheng Lin & Ning Lv & Wei Zhang & Yawen Sun, 2022. "Can government low-carbon regulation stimulate urban green innovation? Quasi-experimental evidence from China’s low-carbon city pilot policy," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(57), pages 6559-6579, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:54:y:2022:i:57:p:6559-6579
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2022.2072466
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2022.2072466
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2022.2072466?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yang, Shubo & Jahanger, Atif & Hossain, Mohammad Razib, 2023. "How effective has the low-carbon city pilot policy been as an environmental intervention in curbing pollution? Evidence from Chinese industrial enterprises," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    2. Liu, Xia, 2023. "Tourism development, environmental regulations, and natural resource management: Evidence from G20 countries," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(PA).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:54:y:2022:i:57:p:6559-6579. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.