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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Policy and Governance
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1534526
This article is part of the Research Topic Climate Risk and Green and Low-Carbon Transformation: Economic Impact and Policy Response View all 18 articles
Gift or Gamble? Evaluating the Impact of Urban Low-Carbon Governance on High-Quality Development in China
Provisionally accepted- Guangxi University, Nanning, China
This study evaluates the impact of low-carbon governance on high-quality development (HQD) in China, analyzing its potential as a beneficial “gift” or a risky “gamble.” Using the difference-in-differences (DID) method, panel data from 351 Chinese cities spanning from 2000 to 2021 were analyzed, with the Low-Carbon City Pilot Policy (LCCP) utilized as a quasi-natural experiment. The findings indicate that the LCCP significantly enhances HQD by 0.006 units, thereby supporting the Porter Hypothesis within the context of China's environmental and economic policies. Robustness tests, including parallel trend test, propensity score matching-DID, and expanded sample analysis, confirm the reliability of these results. Mechanism analysis reveals that the improvements in HQD are driven by technological innovation, industrial upgrading, infrastructure development, and energy system transformation. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis shows that the policy's impact is more pronounced in general cities and Han Chinese provinces. These results demonstrate that the LCCP functions as a "gift" for enhancing HQD, offering valuable insights for refining low-carbon governance policies and providing actionable lessons for other countries pursuing ecological environment with well-being growth.
Keywords: Low-carbon pilot cities, urban low-carbon governance, High-quality development, Quasinatural Experiment, Climate Change, sustainable development
Received: 26 Nov 2024; Accepted: 24 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yang, Zhou and Meng. 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:
Yingying Zhou, Guangxi University, Nanning, 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.