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Does green innovation suppress carbon emission intensity? New evidence from China

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Abstract

The sustainable development of human beings is facing severe challenges in the context of a new era. The effective reduction of carbon emission intensity is essential to achieve the goal of sustainable development. Obviously, green innovation is an important factor in mitigating carbon emission intensity. It is important to measure the effect of green innovation on carbon emission intensity for accelerating industrial transformation and building a circular economy system. Therefore, this paper uses the data of 30 provinces in China from 2000 to 2019, obtained by the State Intellectual Property Office, using fixed effects model quantile regression model and Spatial Durbin Model to empirically verify the theoretical hypothesis. The conclusions are as follows: (1) Green innovation inhibits carbon emission intensity. Instrumental variable model and robustness test support this conclusion. (2) For carbon emission intensity under different quantiles, green innovation has a more significant effect on provinces with high carbon emission intensity through “target accountability system” and “reverse coercive system.” (3) There is a significant spatial correlation between green innovation in China’s provinces. The reduction of carbon emission intensity in the region will benefit from the improvement of green innovation in surrounding cities.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from www.cnki.net, but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of www.cnki.net.

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Funding

We received the following supports for this study from different projects: Harbin University of Commerce Graduate Research and Innovation Project: Special Project of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research in Heilongjiang Province: Research on Financial Stability and Risk Disposal from the Perspective of Credit Risk Management of Counterparties of Commercial Banks (20GLD235); General Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Heilongjiang Province: Research on the Construction of Comprehensive Inclusive Financial System in Heilongjiang Province Based on Precision Poverty Alleviation (17GLB024); Harbin University of Commerce Graduate Research and Innovation Project: Research on the Influence Path and Mechanism of Digital inclusive finance on Urban Sustainable Development in Heilongjiang Province(YJSCX2021-715HSD).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Finance, Harbin University of Commerce, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China

    Jinli Liu, Yuxin Duan & Shen Zhong

Authors
  1. Jinli Liu
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  2. Yuxin Duan
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  3. Shen Zhong
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Shen Zhong, Jinli Liu, and Yuxin Duan. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Jinli Liu, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shen Zhong.

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Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study involves the macrodata of human economy and society. All the data are from the official statistical yearbook. The data collection process is in line with the ethical and moral standards. The research method of this study is spatial econometric method, and there is no need for ethical approval and animal experiment content. The author guarantees that the process, content, and conclusion of this study do not violate the theory and moral principles.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 17

Table 17 SDM regression results based on 2005, 2012, 2019 economic distance matrix
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Liu, J., Duan, Y. & Zhong, S. Does green innovation suppress carbon emission intensity? New evidence from China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 86722–86743 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21621-z

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