Can the Smart City Pilot Policy Promote High-Quality Economic Development? A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on 239 Cities in China

Shuai Liu, Guoxin Jiang (), Le Chang and Lin Wang
Additional contact information
Shuai Liu: School of Marketing Management, Liaoning Technical University, Huludao 125105, China
Guoxin Jiang: School of Business Administration, Liaoning Technical University, Huludao 125105, China
Le Chang: School of Marketing Management, Liaoning Technical University, Huludao 125105, China
Lin Wang: School of Marketing Management, Liaoning Technical University, Huludao 125105, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 23, 1-17

Abstract: By the end of 2020, more than 900 cities in China had made plans to construct smart cities. Based on the data of 239 cities in China from 2003 to 2019, this study developed difference-in-difference (DID) models to evaluate the promoting effect of the smart city pilot policy on high-quality economic development. The results show that the smart city pilot policy has significantly promoted high-quality economic development, and this conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests. The policy is more conducive to high-quality economic development in the small and medium-sized cities of mid-western regions than in the large cities in eastern regions. The impact mechanism test shows that the pilot policy affects the high-quality economic development of a region by improving the levels of innovative development, coordinated development, green development, open development and shared development.

Keywords: smart city; high-quality economic development; five development concepts; China; difference-in-difference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/23/16005/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/23/16005/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:23:p:16005-:d:989252

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().