Can Smart City Pilot Reduce Urban Haze Pollution? ——Empirical Evidence from Chinese Cities

Abstract

Abstract Considering China's smart city pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment, the panel data of 284 cities from 2003 to 2020 were selected to evaluate the effect of smart city construction on haze pollution by combining the propensity score matching method and the difference-in-difference model (PSM-DID). The research results show that: (1) smart city construction has effectively reduced the concentration of urban haze, which is still valid after a series of robustness tests. (2) the results of heterogeneous test show that the smart city pilot has a stronger inhibitory effect on eastern cities, large and medium-sized cities, and cities with high level of talent agglomeration and intelligence. (3) the mechanism test found that the smart city pilot can indirectly promote the city haze governance by improving the innovation capacity (collaborative innovation and green innovation), improving the efficiency of resource allocation, and increasing the entrepreneurship rate of modern service industries. (4) after further exploration, it was found that the construction of smart cities has a significant spatial spillover effect on haze pollution. While promoting haze control in the local city, it will also suppress the haze concentration of neighboring cities through "demonstration effect".