Can sustainable development policy reduce carbon emissions? Empirical evidence from resource-based cities in China

Resource-based cities (RBCs) have made outstanding contributions to China's social and economic development over recent decades. Nevertheless, with the worsening climate change and the exhausted resources, how to curb carbon emissions of RBCs to deliver their low-carbon transformation is becoming a problem plaguing the world. To facilitate the low-carbon transformation of RBCs, the Chinese government has formulated many policies, including the Sustainable Development Policy of National Resource-based Cities, 2013-2020 (SDPRC). However, the implementation of SDPRC has not yielded a clear environmental influence. Therefore, this study employs the Propensity Score Matching-Difference in Difference to investigate this influence based on the panel data of 285 prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2017 while exploring the related heterogeneity and impact mechanisms. It is found that: (1) the implementation of SDPRC has significantly reduced carbon emissions and intensities of RBCs, with this effect becoming more conspicuous with the advancement of the policy. A robust test also verifies these findings. (2) Results from the heterogeneity test demonstrate that the implementation of SDPRC has imposed a suppressive effect on CO₂ emissions in eastern, central, and western Chinese regions, especially pronounced in the latter two regions. Except for the growing cities, which are not significantly affected by the policy, the other three types of cities have seen a catalytic effect on CO₂ emission reduction from the implementation of the policy, with the most significant impact observed in the declining cities. (3) Analyses of related mechanisms reveal that thanks to the implementation of SDPRC, RBCs suppress CO₂ emissions mainly by optimizing their industrial structures and relieving their energy intensities. Finally, some policy recommendations are proposed based on the findings of this study to facilitate the low-carbon transformation of RBCs.