Extreme heat and firms' robot adoption: Evidence from China

Yuwei Tang and Zhenyu He

China Economic Review, 2024, vol. 85, issue C

Abstract: This is the first study to explore the relationship between extreme heat and firms' robot adoption. The findings demonstrate that, relative to a day in the reference temperature bin, an extra day with an average temperature above 30°C reduces the probability of a firm adopting robots and the cumulative number of robots a firm has adopted. The channels of tightened financial constraints and the increased comparative advantages of industrial robots over labor are important in explaining the documented impacts. The negative effects of extreme heat are only pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises, firms with negative working capital, and firms in industries with fewer automation opportunities. Moreover, local adaptation in high-temperature regions mitigates the negative impacts of extreme heat on robot adoption. This study focuses on firms' adaptive behavior under extreme heat, which previous studies have largely overlooked, with implications for policymakers concerned with climate change adaptation and industrial automation.

Keywords: Extreme heat; Robot adoption; Adaptation; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X24000506
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:85:y:2024:i:c:s1043951x24000506

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2024.102161

Access Statistics for this article

China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu

More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().