Pollution Reduction, Informatization and Sustainable Urban Development—Evidence from the Smart City Projects in China

Xiaoya Hu, Huimin Huang, Jun Ruan and Weijia Wang ()
Additional contact information
Xiaoya Hu: Institute of Food and Strategic Reserves, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, Nanjing 210023, China
Huimin Huang: School of Public Administration, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China
Jun Ruan: Overseas Study Service Centre, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China
Weijia Wang: School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC 3216, Australia

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 13, 1-15

Abstract: China’s modernization endeavors to advance both material and spiritual civilization concomitantly; nevertheless, the nation presently faces a pressing issue of urban pollution. This research examines how the introduction of information technology has affected environmental pollution in Chinese cities. By utilizing a panel dataset consisting of 214 prefecture-level cities in China spanning from 2005 to 2017, we employed a time-varying DID model with smart city pilot projects serving as a quasi-natural experiment to assess the impact of informatization on environmental pollution. The establishment of smart cities has remarkably elevated the information quotient of urban areas. Additionally, the results indicate a significant reduction in pollution levels in urban areas as a result of informatization, which remained robust even after conducting a series of rigorous tests to ensure the reliability of the findings. Mechanism analysis shows that informatization of smart cities affects the environmental governance behavior of enterprises and governments. Consequently, the implementation of informatization in smart cities can effectively alleviate environmental pollution by means of both the technique effect and structure effect. This finding calls for the Chinese government to improve informatization by promoting smart city pilot projects to build sustainable cities.

Keywords: urbanization; smart city; informatization; environmental pollution; green economy; sustainable urban development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/13/10030/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/13/10030/ (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:15:y:2023:i:13:p:10030-:d:1178608

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 ().