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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1404676
This article is part of the Research Topic Green Finance & Carbon Neutrality: Strategies and Policies for a Sustainable Future View all 33 articles

The Impact of Pilot Policies for Low Carbon City Construction on the Development of Urban Circular Economy Multiple Time-Point Difference-In-Differences Model

Provisionally accepted
Shumei Xiao Shumei Xiao *Yulan Liu Yulan Liu Jing Rong Jing Rong Wei Wang Wei Wang
  • Chaohu University, Chaohu, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    As a means of environmental regulation, the low-carbon city pilot policy aims to deal with climate change and alleviate the pressure on environmental resources in economic development. This paper studies the impact of low-carbon city pilot policies on the development of urban circular economy to provide a reference for policy formulation. Based on the panel data of 273 prefecture-level cities from 2012 to 2022, the paper constructs an evaluation index system for urban circular economy development. It integrates the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and entropy method for comprehensive evaluation. By taking pilot policies of low-carbon cities as quasi-natural experiments, the multiple time-point difference-in-differences model is used to evaluate the impact of policies. The intermediary effect model is used to test the mechanism of each factor in the development of the urban circular economy. The results demonstrated that at the significance level of 1%, the coefficient of explanatory variables was significant, and the development level of the urban circular economy was significantly increased by 6.3% after adding control variables. The construction of low-carbon pilot cities has improved the development performance of the circular economy by about 6.42%. The intermediary effect of industrial structure rationalization was significantly positive at the 1% significance level, indicating that the construction of low-carbon pilot cities has dramatically promoted the coordinated development of intra-industry relations in the region. The paper shows that the low-carbon city pilot policy has a significant role in promoting the development of the urban circular economy. Therefore, it is suggested to further expand the scope of low-carbon city pilot to give full play to its promoting effect.

    Keywords: Low-carbon, Pilot policies, city, Circular economy, PSM-DID

    Received: 21 Mar 2024; Accepted: 04 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Xiao, Liu, Rong and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Shumei Xiao, Chaohu University, Chaohu, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.