Are Cities Saving Energy by Getting Smarter? Evidence from Smart City Pilots in China

Fei Xue (), Minliang Zhou and Jiaqi Liu
Additional contact information
Fei Xue: Faculty of Applied Economics, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 102488, China
Minliang Zhou: Institute of Industrial Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100006, China
Jiaqi Liu: School of Management, Xi’an University of Science and Technology, Xi’an 710699, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: Taking smart city pilots (SCP) in China as a quasi-experiment, this paper uses the staggered difference-in-differences (staggered DID) to examine the impact of the SCP policy on energy consumption by using panel data of 224 prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2019. The results showed that the SCP policy reduces energy consumption and energy intensity by 3.3% and 5.3%, respectively. Heterogeneity analysis found that the energy-saving effect of the SCP policy is stronger in western cities, resource-based cities, and in cities that were the pioneering pilots. Mechanism analysis showed that smart industry transformation is the main transmission mechanism. Our findings have important practical implications for reforming urban governance models and achieving a low-carbon transition.

Keywords: smart city pilots; energy consumption; energy-saving effect; staggered DID; China (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 (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/2961/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/2961/ (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:4:p:2961-:d:1059796

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 ().