Abstract
Based on panel data of 285 prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2003 to 2020, this study has explored the impacts of smart city policy (SCP) on environmental pollution by utilizing the difference-in-differences (DID) model and its derived models. The results indicate that SCP can significantly reduce environmental pollution, and this conclusion still holds after passing numerous robustness tests, such as the propensity-score-matching difference-in-differences (PSM-DID) test, the placebo test, all independent variables lagging one period test, the policy interference test, and the instrument variable (IV) test. Moreover, the heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect of reducing environmental pollution of SCP is heterogeneous. Furthermore, the results of the spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) model show that SCP has a “beggar-thy-neighbor” effect among the pilot cities, and there is no spillover effect of SCP on pollution reduction in neighboring non-pilot cities. Finally, the analysis of moderating effect reflects that the government intervention plays a negative inhibition role in the process of SCP affecting environmental pollution, while the market competition plays a positive catalytic role in the process of SCP reducing environmental pollution.
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The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Funding
This research was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 20BJY094 & 2020FYB010), and the Postdoctoral Research Foundation of China (No. 2022M720131), the Program for Science&Technology Innovation Talents in Universities of Henan Province (Grant No. 2021-CX-018), and the Great Education Science Bidding Project of 14th Five Year Plan in 2022 of Henan Province (Grant No. 2021JKZB05).
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Conceptualization, S.Q. and Y.F.; methodology, R.W.; software, R.W.; validation, S.Q. and R.W.; formal analysis, Y.F.; data curation, Y.P. and Y.F.; writing—original draft preparation, R.W.; writing—review and editing, Y.P. and Y.F.; visualization, Y.P. and Y.F.; supervision, S.Q. and Y.F.; funding acquisition, S.Q. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Shen, Q., Wu, R., Pan, Y. et al. The effectiveness of smart city policy on pollution reduction in China: new evidence from a quasi-natural experiment. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 52841–52857 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-26010-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-26010-8