Can cross-regional environmental protection promote urban green development: Zero-sum game or win-win choice?

Chengfeng Zhuo, Yuping Xie, Yanhua Mao, Pengqin Chen and Yiqiao Li

Energy Economics, 2022, vol. 106, issue C

Abstract: Forming an effective mechanism of cross-regional environmental protection (CEP) is a feasible way to break the administrative boundary of pollution control and build an ecological community. Using China's prefecture-level city data and patent data from 2003 to 2018, this paper takes the implementation of China's 12th Five-year Plan for the Prevention and Control of Air Pollution in Key Regions as a quasi-natural experiment of CEP and adopts Global Malmquist-Luenberger index method to measure China's urban green total factor productivity (GTFP). Then the Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design, DID model, PSM-DID model and Spatial Lag of X model are used to evaluate the impact of CEP on urban GTFP. Furthermore, this study explains the impact mechanism of CEP on urban GTFP from two aspects, the environmental protection effect and the Potter effect. Finally, what kind of cities are more likely to get the policy dividends from CEP is investigated. It shows that, first, CEP helps to improve urban GTFP, which can increase urban GTFP by about 0.05. In addition, the CEP can not only reduce urban energy intensity and carbon emissions, but also promotes urban innovation and industrial structure upgrading. Furthermore, there are obvious local effects and cross-regional conduction phenomena in the above two mechanisms. Third, for the cities with low resource density, perfect infrastructure and strong government intervention, the promoting effect of CEP on urban GTFP is more obvious. The conclusions of this paper not only help to deepen the understandings about the green economy effect of joint pollution prevention and control, but also provides inspiration in forming an effective cross-regional or multinational environmental protection mechanism.

Keywords: Cross-regional environmental protection; Green total factor productivity; Energy saving; Carbon emission; Innovation; Industrial structure upgrading (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:106:y:2022:i:c:s0140988321006381

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105803

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