Abstract
Improving energy efficiency is an important measure of environmental governance. At present, studies on the impact of high-speed rail on energy efficiency need to be further studied. This paper constructs panel data of 285 cities at prefecture-level and above in China from 2003 to 2017, and uses the difference-in-difference (DID) to study the impact of high-speed railway on urban energy efficiency. Based on the theories of “factor flow,” “knowledge spillover,” and “center-periphery,” this paper discusses the influence mechanism and heterogeneity of high-speed railway on energy efficiency. The empirical results show that high-speed railway can significantly improve energy efficiency, and the conclusion is still valid after parallel trend test, propensity score matching and difference-in-difference (PSM-DID) test, and instrumental variable method. The results remained true after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis shows that high-speed railway can improve energy efficiency by promoting industrial structure upgrading, technological innovation, and market integration. Analysis of heterogeneity shows that the promotion effect of high-speed railway on energy efficiency is greater in central and western cities and core cities. This study provides useful enlightenment for optimizing China’s high-speed rail construction planning and seizing the opportunity of high-speed rail development to improve energy efficiency.
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All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.
Notes
Approximate calculation process is as follows. The De-mean method proposed by Parsley and Wei (2001a, 2001b) was adopted to remove fixed effects related to commodity characteristics. Then obtain the relative price of the city portfolio, subtract the mean, calculate the relative variation of variance, take the average, and take the reciprocal. Limited by space, the specific calculation process is not shown. If necessary, please contact the corresponding author.
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Funding
Work on this paper was supported by a grant from the Jiangxi University Humanities and Social Science Research Project (Grant No.JJ21107) and Jinggangshan University Doctoral Research Project (Grant No. JRB2201).
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Xuehui Yang: conceptualization, methodology, funding acquisition, writing — original draft. Yan Li: formal analysis, methodology, writing — review and editing. Le Liao: software, supervision, writing — review and editing.
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Yang, X., Li, Y. & Liao, L. The impact and mechanism of high-speed rail on energy efficiency: an empirical analysis based on 285 cities of China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 23155–23172 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-23838-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-23838-4