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Does the smart city policy promote the green growth of the urban economy? Evidence from China

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Abstract

Urban governance is an important cornerstone in the modernization of a national governance system. The establishment of smart cities driven by digitalization will be a vital way to promote economic green and sustainable growth. By using the data of 274 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2017, we study the impact of smart city policy on economic green growth and the underlying mechanism of the impact. It is shown that the establishment of smart cities has significantly promoted the green growth of China’s economy. This conclusion is further confirmed by using exogenous geographic data as instrumental variables and robustness tests, such as the quasi-experimental method of Difference in Difference with Propensity Score Matching (PAM-DID). The mechanism test shows that promoting economic growth, reducing per unit GDP energy consumption, and lowering waste emissions represent three ways for smart cities to promote green economic growth. The heterogeneity test shows that smart city policy has an obvious promotional effect on the economic green growth of both large cities and non-resource-based cities. This paper is expected to provide a reference for the urban development and economic transformation of emerging economies.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

  1. Here, we believe that smart manufacturing, smart management, smart logistics, smart business, and other smart models that involve total economic output are smart production.

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Funding

This study was collectively funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [no. 71973068; no. 71803087], Social Science Foundation Major Project of Jiangsu, China [no. 18ZD003]; and Humanities and Social Sciences Research Planning Foundation of China’s Ministry of Education [no. 19YJA790055].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. China Institute of Manufacturing Development and School of Management Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Yu Qian, Jun Liu & Zhonghua Cheng

  2. Department of Accounting Economics Finance, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, PA, 16057, USA

    Jeffrey Yi-Lin Forrest

Authors
  1. Yu Qian
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  2. Jun Liu
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  3. Zhonghua Cheng
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  4. Jeffrey Yi-Lin Forrest
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Contributions

Yu Qian: methodology, data curation, formal analysis, writing (original draft), writing (review and editing). Jun Liu: conceptualization, writing (review and editing), funding acquisition. Zhonghua Cheng: conceptualization, methodology. Jeffrey Yi-Lin Forrest: writing (review and editing), supervision.

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Correspondence to Jun Liu.

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Qian, Y., Liu, J., Cheng, Z. et al. Does the smart city policy promote the green growth of the urban economy? Evidence from China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 66709–66723 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15120-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15120-w

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