Investigating the Impact of Strategic Emerging Enterprises Development on City-Level Carbon Emission Efficiency in China

Abstract

Enhancing carbon emission efficiency at the city level plays a vital role in urban carbon neutrality, given the economic significance of global cities. Strategic emerging enterprises contribute significantly to both economic growth and environmental benefits at the city scale. By analyzing time series data from 2013 to 2022, encompassing 1,805 listed companies in 30 provinces and 293 cities in China, we investigated the relationship between the expansion of strategic emerging enterprises and carbon emission efficiency at the city and regional levels. Our findings reveal a notable positive spatial correlation between carbon emission efficiency and the growth of strategic emerging enterprises across diverse regions in China, with observed spatial spillover effects. Comparing city-level and regional-level dynamics, we observed that a 1% increase in carbon emission efficiency in different provinces and cities leads to a respective 0.168% and 0.187% rise in neighboring regions’ carbon emission efficiency. Furthermore, our results indicate a “U-shaped” nonlinear relationship between the impact of strategic emerging enterprises and carbon emission efficiency, suggesting an initial decline before eventual improvement. These implications underscore the importance of considering the trade-off between economic growth and emission reduction goals when charting future decarbonization pathways at the sub-national level.

Keywords: City-level decarbonization pathway, Strategic emerging enterprise, Carbon emission efficiency, spatial econometrics, Firm growth, China