Abstract
The rapid development of digital technology has brought great changes to the whole society, and cities are therefore moving towards smart cities. The role of smart city construction on economic development is obvious. However, the environmental impact of smart city construction is still controversial and under-explored. To narrow the research gap, this research takes smart city pilot policy (SCP) as a quasi-natural experiment to explore the effect of smart city construction on environmental pollution, and a multi-period DID based on panel data of 236 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2020 has been considered. It is found that SCP reduces environmental pollution by 2.2% on average, and the results remain reliable after a series of robustness tests. The mechanism analysis indicates that SCP reduces environmental pollution through the synergistic management of the triple approach of promoting green innovation, optimizing industrial structure, and encouraging public participation. The heterogeneity analysis suggests that the environmental pollution reduction effect of SCP is more pronounced in eastern region and in regions with high administrative hierarchy, high level of human capital and information infrastructure. The spatial spillover effect analysis further shows that the environment in the cities surrounding the pilots can also benefit from SCP.