Effects and Mechanisms of High Speed Railways on County-Level Carbon Emissions in China
The paper uses the opening of high-speed railways as a quasi-natural experiment and uses panel data from 1,120 counties across China from 2003 to 2020 to construct a multi-period double-difference model to evaluate the impact of high-speed railway opening on county-level carbon emissions and analyze its mechanism.The study finds that the opening of high-speed railways can lower county-level carbon emissions;the impact of high-speed railway opening on county-level carbon re-duction is heterogeneous,specifically,the carbon reduction effect of high-speed rail on the counties under the provincial capital is more obvious,and the positive impact of high-speed rail on county-level carbon reduction will gradually decrease as the dis-tance from the center city increases.Compared with non-top 100 counties and counties with smaller population,the carbon re-duction effect of high-speed rail on top 100 counties and large population counties is more obvious;high-speed rail mainly re-duces county-level carbon emissions through improving economic efficiency,driving industrial structure upgrading,and en-hancing market potential.The construction of high-speed railways has important implications for promoting the high-quality development of county-level areas.Therefore,it is necessary to further improve the railway network and other infrastructure construction,promote the extension of high-speed rail to more county-level areas,and strengthen exchanges and cooperation between county-level areas and the center city.
high-speed railwaycounty-level carbon emissionscarbon reductioncounty-level areas
万方数据
维普
