19/2/24, 15:45 Promoting or inhibiting?

New-type urbanization and urban carbon emissions efficiency in China - ScienceDirect

Cities
Volume 140, September 2023, 104429

Promoting or inhibiting? New-type urbanization and urban carbon

emissions efficiency in China
Wanxu Chen a b , Guanzheng Wang a , Ning Xu c , Min Ji c , Jie Zeng a

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2023.104429
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Highlights

• New type urbanization (NTU) can promote urban carbon emissions efficiency
(UCEE).

• Effect and transmission mechanisms of NTU on UCEE in China were investigated.

• Mechanism between NTU and UCEE was tested at multiple levels using
empirical model.

• NTU had significant heterogeneous effect on UCEE with respect to several

factors.

Abstract

Urban carbon emissions lead to increases in global carbon emissions; consequently, meeting targets for low carbon emissions is a difficult
problem in the context of urbanization. Improving urban carbon emissions efficiency (UCEE) in the new-type urbanization (NTU) process
is key to reducing urban carbon and enhancing sustainable urban development. However, the potential of NTU in facilitating improved
UCEE remains unclear. Thus, we investigated the effect and transmission mechanisms of NTU on UCEE in China. A set of spatial
econometric models was used, with panel data from 283 cities across China from 2006 to 2019. The results showed that NTU significantly
promoted the improvement of UCEE, and UCEE improved strongly during the later stage of NTU construction. In China's central and
western cities, large cities, and non-natural resource–based cities, the promotion effect of NTU on UCEE was more significant. Overall, the
economic agglomeration effect had the most significant influence, followed by the government leading effect and resource allocation
effect. Moreover, the NTU pilot policies of civilized city, low-carbon city, innovative city, smart city, and green finance city significantly
promoted the improvement of UCEE. These findings provide theoretical and empirical evidence for the effective achievement of the “dual
carbon” goal with respect to NTU in China.

Introduction

Urbanization is a historical process, whereby a conventional agricultural rural society is gradually transformed into a modern non-
agricultural urban society (Poumanyvong & Kaneko, 2010; Wu et al., 2022). In recent decades, urbanization has promoted social and
economic development and improved living standards. However, urbanization is a “double-edged sword,” and its disadvantages, such as
the high consumption of resources and energy and deterioration of the ecological environment, cannot be ignored (Deng et al., 2015; Han
et al., 2018). Global warming is an inevitable problem following urbanization caused by the release of greenhouse gases, such as carbon
emissions (Zhou et al., 2022). Studies have revealed that global carbon emissions related to urbanization account for 70 % of all carbon
emissions, and this will continue to increase with progressing global urbanization (Wang et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2016). Therefore,
research on the impact of traditional urbanization on urban carbon emissions efficiency (UCEE) has attracted widespread attention.

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19/2/24, 15:45 Promoting or inhibiting? New-type urbanization and urban carbon emissions efficiency in China - ScienceDirect
However, traditional urbanization, focused on growth rate, has been gradually replaced by new-type urbanization (NTU), which focuses
on quality improvement (Yu, 2021). Few studies have investigated the effect of NTU on UCEE, particularly at the micro-scale. Additionally,
clarifying the relationship between NTU and UCEE is difficult. It is imperative, therefore, to explore the mechanism of NTU's effect on
UCEE and its heterogeneity.

In China, the traditional urbanization development model emphasizing economy, scale, and speed has generated extensive economic,
social, and ecological problems (Chen et al., 2018; Zhang & Xu, 2017; Zhao & Wang, 2022). To deal with these problems, in 2014, the
Chinese government published the “National New Urbanization Plan (2014–2020)” document, which highlighted that the NTU strategy
should be implemented. Unlike traditional urbanization, NTU is strongly people-oriented (Chen et al., 2019). It not only considers
economy and scale (Zhang, Tan, et al., 2022) but also emphasizes the quality of urban ecology (Wang, Jiang, et al., 2019), public services
(Tahmasbi et al., 2019), and spatial form (Chen et al., 2018). Meanwhile, research on urbanization has also achieved fruitful results in other
country contexts, where urbanization mainly includes three main modes. The first is urbanization with equal emphasis on government
regulation and market dominance, represented by Western European countries. The second is market-led, low-density sprawling
urbanization, represented by the United States. The third mode involves over-urbanization without industrial support, represented by
regions such as Latin America and Africa (Yang, 2013). Previous studies have explored the theoretical connotations, development
frameworks and paths, monitoring and evaluation systems, pattern characteristics, influential effects, coupling and coordination, policy
regulation, and sustainable development of NTU (Bosch et al., 2020; Chen et al., 2016; Kacmaz et al., 2008; Li & Song, 2020; Lin & Zhu,
2021; Mažeikis, 2013; Zagyi et al., 2021). Research has been conducted at various scales, including the country, urban agglomeration,
basin, province, district, city, and county level (Arsanjani et al., 2018; Doygun & Alphan, 2006; Hao et al., 2022; Kassouri, 2021; Rabehi et
al., 2019; Shi et al., 2020; Song & Hu, 2018). NTU incorporates the concept of green development to solve a series of practical problems in
the urbanization process. NTU is therefore expected to have a profound influence on promoting low-carbon development in urban areas
throughout China. However, whether NTU has promoted or inhibited carbon emissions remains unexplored.

UCEE is an economic efficiency index that comprehensively considers carbon emissions under certain production specifications and is a
key indicator of low-carbon development (Feng, Shen, et al., 2022; Yu & Chen, 2019; Zhou et al., 2019). Studies have focused on UCEE and
its influencing factors from various aspects, including low-carbon and energy policy, high-speed rail opening, financial development,
digital economy, technical innovation, industrial structure, and foreign direct investment (FDI) (Dong, Zhu, et al., 2022; Du et al., 2022; Li
& Cheng, 2022; Ma et al., 2018; Wang & Shao, 2022; Xie et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2021; Zhang, Tan, et al., 2022). Various methods have
been introduced to explore these issues. For example, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method synthetically considers multi-factor
inputs and outputs (Feng, Shen, et al., 2022). It effectively overcomes the influence of subjectively setting model parameters and has been
widely used to evaluate UCEE (Molinos-Senante et al., 2016). The slacks-based measure (SBM) model has been widely introduced to
estimate UCEE and includes adverse outputs, such as carbon emissions, in the index evaluation system (Fang et al., 2022; Shi & Xu, 2022;
Tang et al., 2021; Yan et al., 2017). However, it fails to simultaneously handle the radial and non-radial input–output relationship, which
could lead to UCEE being underestimated (Li, Luo, et al., 2020). The epsilon-based measure (EBM) model, possessing both radial and non-
radial distance functions, effectively resolves this problem (Tone & Tsutsui, 2010). Although studies have explored UCEE (Dong, Xia, et al.,
2022; Erdoğan et al., 2022; Pu & Fei, 2022), the influence mechanism of traditional urbanization on UCEE is still unclear, particularly that
of NTU on UCEE.

Studies have explored the relationship between traditional urbanization and UCEE based on provincial data and found that traditional
urbanization improves UCEE (Li, Luo, et al., 2020). China's NTU involves the population, economy, space, society, ecology, and various
other aspects; consequently, it is a complicated, dynamic, and multidimensional engineering system and social space process (Zhao &
Wang, 2022; Zhou et al., 2015). Studies have revealed the relationship between urbanization and carbon emissions for separate
components (i.e., population urbanization and economic urbanization) (Yao et al., 2021; Zhu et al., 2022), isolating the integrity and
systematization of NTU. Moreover, some studies have investigated how NTU affects environmental pollution (Zhao & Wang, 2022), energy
intensity (Lin & Zhu, 2021), energy efficiency (Feng, Liu, & Yuan, 2022), ecological security (Fang et al., 2021; Zeng et al., 2022), carbon
emissions (Wang, Sun, & Wang, 2019), and other factors. However, the relationship between NTU and UCEE needs to be further explored.
Additionally, these studies rarely considered the endogeneity of NTU's eco-environmental effects, the assessment value of which could be
lower than the true value. Although some studies have considered these effects, they were only conducted at the provincial level,
excluding city-level information (Wang, Sun, & Wang, 2019; Zhao & Wang, 2022). Resolving these issues is theoretically and practically
meaningful for China as it will help advance high-quality NTU construction and sustainable socio-economic development that takes into
consideration “dual carbon.”

Carbon dioxide emissions from China accounted for 27.6 % of global emissions in 2017 (Huang et al., 2019). As the world's largest carbon
emitter, China's carbon emissions are related not only to its own high-quality development but also to achieving its “dual carbon” goals.
Moreover, in 2018, cities in which environmental testing was up to standard only accounted for 35.8 % (Hao, Wu, et al., 2020). However,
the impact mechanism of NTU on UCEE at the city level is unknown and fails to provide policy guidance for carbon emission control and
environmental improvement in China. Therefore, studying the impact of NTU on UCEE in China, particularly at the microscopic city scale,
is crucial for promoting the high-quality development of NTU and improving UCEE. Moreover, a scientific reference for other countries
and regions should be provided to coordinate the relationship between NTU and UCEE. Based on this, we set the following research
objectives: (1) combine theoretical and empirical analyses to evaluate how NTU affects UCEE and associated heterogeneity; (2) reveal the
influence mechanism of NTU on UCEE from government leading, resource allocation, and economic agglomeration effects; and (3) assess

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19/2/24, 15:45 Promoting or inhibiting? New-type urbanization and urban carbon emissions efficiency in China - ScienceDirect
the impact of the NTU pilot policy on UCEE using the bidirectional fixed difference-in-differences (DID) model and propensity score
matching-DID model. The remainder of the manuscript is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the impact mechanism of NTU on
UCEE; Section 3 presents the methodology; Section 4 presents the empirical analysis and research findings; Section 5 presents the
discussion, policy implications, validation, and future directions; and Section 6 provides the conclusions.

Section snippets

Impact mechanism of NTU on UCEE

China's NTU requires building an intensive, efficient, compact, green, and low-carbon city (Lin & Zhu, 2021; Zhao & Wang, 2022). To cope
with the strict environmental control implemented by local governments and changes to market demand, enterprises must change
current production methods that typically involve high energy consumption, emissions, and pollution (Kolko, 2010); otherwise, they will
be excluded. The residents of compact, high-density, and polycentric urban spatial structures can…

Economic model

To reveal the influencing mechanism of NTU on UCEE, this study developed a panel benchmark model and panel mediation effect model
(Zhang, Liu, et al., 2022).

The panel benchmark model is expressed as model Eq. (1):

Based on the mediation effect model created by Baron and Kenny (1986), model Eq. (2) and model Eq. (3) are expressed as follows:

In model Eq. (1), is the total effect of NTU on UCEE; …

Benchmark analysis

Table 4 presents the benchmark regression results. Column (1) corresponds to the estimated result without considering any control
variables. The results show that NTU significantly promoted an improvement of UCEE (Table 4). When control variables were added, NTU
continued to improve UCEE considerably. Promoting the construction of NTU was conducive to developing an urban low-carbon economy.
The regression results (Table 4, column 9) showed that, for every 1 % increase in NTU, UCEE increased by…

Interpretation of findings

The promotion of NTU significantly improved UCEE during the study period. Government leading, resource allocation, and economic
agglomeration effects promoted UCEE improvement, which supports hypothesis 1 (i.e., NTU can promote the improvement of UCEE). Pilot
policies can make important contributions to the improvement of UCEE in civilized, low-carbon, innovative, smart, and green finance
cities. The civilized city policy is a practical achievement put forward by the Chinese government to…

Conclusion

Combined with theoretical analysis, this study evaluated the effect of NTU on UCEE, analyzed the mechanism of action, and examined the
heterogeneity effects between the two. The conclusions are summarized below.

According to the benchmark analysis results, NTU significantly promoted the improvement of UCEE. A series of robustness and
endogeneity analyses also supported this conclusion. However, NTU's effect on UCEE also exhibited spatiotemporal heterogeneity.
Compared with the early stage of…

Funding

This study was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant numbers 42001187], the Key Laboratory of
Geospatial Technology for Middle and Lower Yellow River Regions (Henan University), Ministry of Education (No. GTYR202205), and the
research was also funded by Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of Henan Province, Grant number 2021CJJ149.…

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Wanxu Chen: Methodology, Writing – original draft, Resources, Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – review & editing, Software,
Data curation. Guanzheng Wang: Writing – review & editing. Ning Xu: Methodology, Writing – original draft, Resources, Writing – review
& editing, Software, Data curation. Min Ji: Methodology, Writing – original draft, Resources. Jie Zeng: Methodology, Writing – original
draft, Resources.…

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19/2/24, 15:45 Promoting or inhibiting? New-type urbanization and urban carbon emissions efficiency in China - ScienceDirect

Declaration of competing interest

None.…

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