Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2023.2181840
The effects of smart city construction on urban green total factor productivity: evidence from China
Hongmin Fan
Nan Zhang
Huihan Su
Abstract
As a new urbanization mode, smart cities provide a way to
achieve the mutually beneficial situation of both economic development
and environmental protection. As such, the question of
whether and how smart-city construction can promote the highquality
development of urban economies is worth considering. By
measuring the green total factor productivity (GTFP) of 233 cities
in China from 2004–2019, this paper adopts the national pilot
smart cities of China as a quasi-experiment and constructs a timevarying
DID model to explore the direct, dynamic, and heterogeneity
influence of smart-city construction on GTFP. The results indicate
the following: (1) Smart-city construction can significantly
promote the urban GTFP, which is mainly caused by the progress
of green technology, and the effect is robust after a series of
robustness tests; (2) smart-city construction can contribute to
GTFP improvement primarily through accelerating technological
innovation, promoting industrial upgrading, and realizing resource
allocation optimization; and (3) smart cities that are larger in
scale, have a higher administrative rank, and lie in eastern regions
have stronger positive effects on GTFP. This study aims to contribute
to the promotion of urban sustainable development.
Keywords
Smart-city construction; green total-factor productivity; green economic development; time-varying DID
Hrčak ID:
306544
URI
Publication date:
31.3.2023.
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