The pressure of political promotion and renewable energy technological innovation: A spatial econometric analysis from China

The role of the pressure of political promotion in China's economic and social development has been affirmed. However, an investigation on whether the pressure of political promotion affects renewable energy technological innovation (RETI) and its mechanism in China is underdeveloped. Using the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2007 to 2018, we investigate how the pressure of political promotion affects RETI with spatial econometric analysis. The results show that, first, the pressure of political promotion negatively affects RETI in both local and other regions. Second, there indeed exists spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the negative effect of the pressure of political promotion on RETI. For the temporal variation, the negative effect shows a decrease fol-lowed by an increase. For the spatial differences, the negative effect is greatest in the northeast region, followed by the central and eastern coastal regions, and the smallest in the western region. Finally, the spatial transmission mechanism analysis indicates that the decrease of pressure of political promotion can promote RETI by increasing the level of marketization. This study contributes to improving government governance and pro-moting renewable energy development.