Can the Construction of Smart Cities Promote the"Quantity and Quality Improvement"of Green Technological Innovations in Enterprises?
Based on data for green patent applications of listed companies in China from 2007 to 2021,this paper uses the smart city pilot policy as a natural experiment.It employs a multi-point difference-in-differences(DID)model to explore the impact of smart city construction on enterprise green technological innovation and the channel for this effect.The study finds that smart city construction has a significant promotional effect on both the quantity and quality of green technological innovation.This result holds following a series of robustness tests,including parallel trend,multi-period propensity-score-matching DID,and placebo tests.As regards the effect channel,smart city construction can promote green technological innovation through environmental protection subsidies provided by the government,alleviating financing constraints,and gathering high-quality talent and high-tech enterprises.Further analysis shows that the pilot policy has a greater promotional effect on the green technological innovation of state-owned,large-scale,and high-tech enterprises.This paper provides empirical evidence at the micro-level for the evaluation of smart city pilot policies and has important policy implications for improving the level of green technological innovation.
smart citygreen technology innovationquantityqualitymultistage DID
万方数据
