Abstract
Effective government-led innovation is essential for develo** countries, such as China, which lack market mechanisms to address the threat of climate change. However, previous studies have ignored the role of government-led innovation in regard to carbon emissions. This study exploited exogenous quasi-natural experiments on a national innovative city pilot (NICP) policy and employed the difference-in-differences (DID) method to investigate the impact of government-led innovation on carbon emissions. This study concluded that government-led innovation can substantially reduce carbon emissions with a time-lag effect. The underlying mechanisms include improvements in technological innovation, energy consumption, and industrial structures. Government-led innovation encourages green innovation. Comparatively, this carbon reduction effect primarily exists in midwestern cities, cities with low administrative levels, and cities with high human capital. Our findings suggest that governments should try to increase their R&D investments in economically disadvantaged areas and focus on synergies with human capital to reduce carbon emissions.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon request.
Notes
Industrial SO2 and dust emission data were collected from the CSMAR database. PM2.5 concentration data were collected from the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC).
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This research was supported by the Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science Project (22YJC790104); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities in China (JZ2022HGQA0182).
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Yanyan Shen: Conceptualization, data curation, project administration, writing-original draft supervision. Zhen Li: Methodology, theoretical analysis, software, validation, visualization, and writing-review & editing. All authors commented on revised versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the revised manuscript.
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Li, Z., Shen, Y. Government-led innovation and carbon emissions: evidence from China. Environ Dev Sustain (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-024-04853-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-024-04853-6