Has the smart city construction reduced energy consumption? Evidence from China
Management of Environmental Quality
ISSN: 1477-7835
Article publication date: 27 June 2024
Issue publication date: 29 November 2024
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates the impact of smart city construction (SCC) on urban energy consumption.
Design/methodology/approach
The focus is on a panel of 285 prefecture level cities in China from 2010 to 2021. The empirical evidence is based on the difference-in-difference (DID) method. We uses per capita coal consumption as a proxy variable to measure urban energy consumption energy consumption. We set the SCC as a policy dummy variable, with pilot cities set to 1 and non-pilot cities set to 0. We also selected a series of control variables that affect urban energy consumption, such as urbanization rate, labor force, road density, number of college students per 10000 people, regional economic development level and so on.
Findings
(1) SCC significantly reduces urban energy consumption, and the conclusion still holds after conducting robustness testing; (2) SCC reduces urban energy consumption is mainly effective in those cities with larger scale, stronger human capital, larger financial services and better information infrastructure construction; (3) The technological innovation and industrial structure upgrading are the main mechanisms for the SSC policy to reduce urban energy consumption.
Originality/value
The results in this study provide evidence for achieving an environmentally friendly society.
Keywords
Citation
Xu, S. and Xiong, Y. (2024), "Has the smart city construction reduced energy consumption? Evidence from China", Management of Environmental Quality, Vol. 35 No. 8, pp. 1798-1814. https://doi.org/10.1108/MEQ-04-2024-0160
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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