Impact of Carbon Emission Trading Policy on Urban Ecological Well-being Performance from the Perspective of High-quality Development

Abstract

Promoting environmental regulation and the reduction of carbon emissions are the key path to guide the high-quality development. Based on the concept of high-quality development, a framework for evaluating the urban ecological well-being performance (UEWP) was constructed, the quality of economic development of 253 prefecture-level cities in China from 2010 to 2019 was measured using the Super-SBM model, and a quasi-natural experiment of China's carbon emissions trading policy (CETP) was constructed using differences-in-differences (DID) model, in order to measure the impact and effect mechanism of the implementation of CETP on the UEWP. The results show that the average values of UEWP in China show a distribution pattern of being higher in the eastern region, lower in the western region and lowest in the middle region; the overall trend of UEWP is fluctuating upward; CETP has significantly improved UEWP; urban heterogeneity tests illustrate that CETP plays more significant role in promoting UEWP of cities in the middle region and the central cities. CETP can advance industrial structure upgrading, thereby promoting UEWP; however, there is no evidence that CETP can stimulate the regional Porter effect.