Carbon Consequences of the Sharing Economy: Evidence from the Chinese Urban Context

Ying Dong ()
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Ying Dong: China Agriculture University, International Collage of Beijing

A chapter in Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Big Data Economy and Digital Management (BDEDM 2026), 2026, pp 46-57 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the environmental consequences of the sharing economy in the context of China’s urban carbon reduction goals. Leveraging monthly panel data from 296 Chinese cities between 2015 and 2017, this paper employ a high-dimensional fixed effects (HDFE) model and treat the staggered Treat*Post of platform-based services as a quasi-natural experiment. Our findings reveal that the Treat*Post of sharing economy platforms significantly reduces urban carbon emissions, with an average decline of 0.61%. Robustness checks—including placebo simulations, alternative specifications, and subsample tests—confirm the reliability of the results. Mechanism analyses suggest that emission reductions occur through improved traffic efficiency and institutional synergy, particularly in cities with stronger governance capacity. Heterogeneity analyses further show that the carbon-reducing effects are more pronounced in economically developed and less industrialized (service-oriented) cities. These findings contribute to the understanding of how digital platforms interact with environmental outcomes and offer practical policy implications for fostering green innovation in urban governance.

Keywords: Sharing Economy; Platform Entry; Urban Carbon Emissions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:advbcp:978-94-6239-640-1_5

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DOI: 10.2991/978-94-6239-640-1_5

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