Mechanism of smart city policy on the carbon emissions of construction enterprises in the Yangtze River Economic Belt: a perspective of the PESTEL model and the pollution halo hypothesis

Abstract

Abstract Most of the current studies on carbon emission reduction have been focusing on the urban and industrial levels, overlooking policy assessment studies on the carbon emissions of construction enterprises in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB). To explore the impact of smart city policy (SCP) on the carbon emissions of construction enterprises, this paper constructs a theoretical framework model for evaluating SCP based on the Political-Economic-Sociocultural-Technological-Environmental-Legal (PESTEL) model and the perspective of the pollution halo hypothesis. In addition, this paper adopts panel data of 110 cities covered by the YREB from 2004 to 2021 and verifies the SCP impact mechanism on the carbon emissions of construction enterprises in the YREB through the difference-in-differences (DID) method, the propensity score matching (PSM) method, and the analysis of mediating effects and moderating effects. The conclusions are as follows: (1) the SCP significantly curbs the carbon emissions of the construction enterprises in the YREB pilot cities; (2) the SCP has a regional qualitative effect on the carbon emissions of the construction enterprises in the YREB and it curbs the carbon emissions of the construction enterprises in the upstream and downstream regions; (3) R&D and FDI are important transmission mechanisms; and (4) new urbanization construction has a positive moderating effect on the carbon emission reduction effect of the SCP on construction enterprises. As a research precedence, this paper reveals for the first time the mechanism of the SCP on the carbon emissions of construction enterprises in the YREB through the lens of the PESTEL model and the pollution halo hypothesis; the paper not only enriches the research related to urban policies but also provides new evidence from Chinese construction enterprises for assessing the impacts of pilot cities.