ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Achieving Clean Air through Smart Cities.
Evidence from China
More details
Hide details
1
Business School, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan 411105, Hunan, China
2
College of Mathematics and Finance, Hunan University of Humanities, Science and Technology, Loudi 417000, Hunan, China
Submission date: 2023-07-31
Final revision date: 2023-09-10
Acceptance date: 2023-10-01
Online publication date: 2024-02-06
Publication date: 2024-02-28
Corresponding author
Hongguo Sun
Xiangtan University; Hunan University of Humanities, Science and Technology, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2024;33(3):2291-2306
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
This paper uses the panel data of 245 cities in China from 2005 to 2020 to build an ambient air
pollution index to measure ambient air quality. Taking China’s national smart city pilot as a quasiexperiment,
the impact of smart city construction on urban ambient air quality and its impact path
is tested by using the multi-period double difference method. The research results show that the
construction of smart cities has significantly improved the urban ambient air quality, and with the
improvement of the level of smart city construction, the degree of improvement in urban ambient air
quality shows a positive fluctuation trend. The mechanism test results show that the construction of
smart cities improves urban ambient air quality by enhancing the level of technological innovation and
marketization in the city. Heterogeneity testing shows that the ambient air quality improvement effects
of smart city construction vary depending on the size of the city’s population and the geographical
location of the city. Furthermore, the moderating effect test shows that financial autonomy and industrial
structure upgrading have a positive moderating effect on the improvement of ambient air quality in
smart cities, while local government environmental regulation intensity has a reverse moderating effect.