The Impact of Carbon Emissions Trading on Urban Green Development
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6981/FEM.202608_7(8).0006Keywords:
Emissions Trading; Urban Green Development; Difference-in-differences Model; Green Innovation; Mediation Effect.Abstract
Under the background of China's "dual carbon" strategy (i.e., the goals of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060) and urban green transformation, carbon emissions trading, as a typical market-oriented environmental regulation policy, has become an important starting point for balancing economic development and ecological protection. This article takes the balanced panel data of prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2024 as the research sample, and regards the pilot policy of carbon emissions trading as a quasi-natural experiment. Two-way fixed-effects difference-in-differences (DID) model is used to empirically test the overall impact and regional heterogeneity of carbon emissions trading on urban green development. Furthermore, the intermediary effect model is constructed to explore the transmission mechanism of green innovation between them. The results show that: First, carbon emissions trading policy can significantly improve the green development level of pilot cities. This conclusion is still valid after multiple robustness tests, such as lagging explanatory variables, random sampling samples, parallel trend test and placebo test. Second, the policy effect of carbon emissions trading has obvious heterogeneity of economic development level. Policies only play a significant role in promoting cities with high economic development level, but the effect is not significant in cities with low economic development level. Third, green innovation plays a significant intermediary role between carbon emissions trading and urban green development. Carbon emissions trading can indirectly promote the green development of cities by stimulating the output of green patents and enhancing the regional green innovation ability. Based on the research conclusion, this article puts forward policy suggestions from the aspects of perfecting the national carbon market construction, implementing differentiated regional policies, and strengthening green innovation incentives, with the aim of providing experience reference and decision-making basis for fully releasing the carbon emissions trading policy dividend and helping the green and high-quality development of cities.
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