Evaluation of China's pilot low-carbon city program: A perspective of industrial carbon emission efficiency

An evaluation of China???s pilot low-carbon city (PLCC) program from the perspective of carbon emission efficiency of industry (CEEI) is conducted in this paper. First, based on the Super-SBM model and MalmquistLuenberger (ML) index, the panel data from 266 Chinese cities during 2006???2018 are used to measure CEEI. Second, the PSM-DID method is used to evaluate the impact of China???s PLCC program on CEEI. Third, analysis of regional heterogeneity and moderating effects of atmospheric pollution regulation are further conducted. The results show that the implementation of PLCC program produces a significant positive growth of about 11.1% in CEEI, and the technological innovation in cities improves CEEI. Further, the implementation of PLCC program in the eastern and central regions has a greater impact on improving CEEI by around 16.3% and 6.5%, respectively, while in the western region is not statistically significant. Moderating effects analysis shows that atmospheric pollution regulation produce significant positive moderating effects on implementing the PLCC program improving CEEI, and these effects will gradually weaken as the region moves from east to west. The moderating effects of atmospheric pollution regulation have significant inverted U-shaped nonlinear impacts in the total sample and eastern region.