Abstract
Government attention and policy implementation are important for achieving environmental goals. This study uses 257 cities in China from 2013–2019 as the sample and measures local government attention through text mining, thus exploring the carbon emission reduction effect of government attention. Threshold regression is further used to examine the role and nonlinear relationship that environmental policies assume in the effect of government attention on carbon emission reduction. The conclusions are as follows: first, government attention can significantly reduce carbon emissions: with a 1% increase in local government attention to environmental protection, China’s urban CO2 can be reduced by 0.04%. Second, the impact of government attention on carbon emissions is more significant in cities in non-air pollution prevention areas, in non-SO2 and acid rain control areas, with longer tenure of officials, and with female officials serving during the sample period. Third, the effect of government attention on carbon emission reduction can be significantly increased under policy influence, especially when two policies are implemented in concert. Fourth, market incentive policies play a stronger role in the first place, while traditional energy-saving policies have strong sustainability. In general, the study concludes that municipalities should allocate more attention to the environment, and it gives some reasons supporting policy choices.
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Funding
2022 The Excellent Postgraduate Innovation Star Project of Gansu Provincial Department of Education “Regional Carbon Reduction Effect and Mechanism Analysis of Energy Policy” (2022CXZX-020).
2022 Excellent Graduate Innovation Project for Basic Research Business Fees in Central Universities: A Study on the Impact of Foreign Investment Technology Spillovers on Local Enterprise Innovation under the Background of “Double Circulation” - Based on the Perspective of Enterprise Linkage (22lzujbkyxs023).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Yuxuan Cao, Li Yue, and **anqiao Gao. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Yuxuan Cao, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Highlights
• 1% increase in local government attention to environmental protection, China’s urban CO2 can be reduced by 0.04%.
• Heterogeneity in regional pollution levels and key characteristics of officials was examined.
• Based on the research idea of “government concern-policy implementation-target performance,” a threshold regression is used to explore the policies and their synergistic effects.
• Exploring the policies in detail, allowing for comparisons of differences within the same class of policies.
• Examining the nonlinear relationship between government attention and carbon emission reduction under the influence of different policies.
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Cao, ., Yue, L. & Gao, X. Exploring the carbon emission reduction effect of local government attention: an analysis based on an environmental policy perspective. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 107634–107649 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-29851-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-29851-5