Political promotion events and energy conservation decisions: Evidence from China

Can Digital Economy Promote Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction in Heavily Polluting Enterprises? Empirical Evidence from China

“…Lack of energy consumption and pollutant emission data of micro-enterprises has brought certain obstacles to related research, while the method of text mining can well reflect whether an enterprise has implemented energy conservation and emission reduction. Therefore, following the research design of Kong et al [ 1 ], this study uses the frequency (logarithmic) of energy conservation and emission reduction-related terms as a proxy variable for corporate energy conservation and emission reduction by analyzing the annual reports of listed enterprises. The terms are determined based on the “Decision of the State Council on Strengthening Energy Conservation”, “The 13th Five-Year Plan for Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction” and the “14th Five-Year Plan for Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction” issued by the Chinese government.…”

“…In other words, digital economy will further change the product market structure and boost market competition, and changes in market competition will in turn affect corporate decisions [ 39 , 40 ]. Facing stricter environment supervision and fiercer market competition, heavily polluting enterprises will proactively invest more in energy conservation and emission reduction to meet government goals, get more government subsidies [ 1 ] or attract investors [ 10 , 11 ], thereby ensuring sustainable growth. From another perspective, intensified market competition drives up the prices of factors of production [ 41 ].…”

“…China’s rapid economic growth in recent decades has brought serious environmental pollution [ 1 ], particularly excessive energy consumption and pollutant emissions in heavily polluting industries [ 2 ]. China’s sulfur dioxide emissions decreased from 21.18 million tons in 2012 to 4.57 million tons in 2019, and power consumption increased from 4976.2 billion kw/h in 2012 to 7486.6 billion kw/h in 2019 [ 3 ].…”

“…Therefore, investors’ preferences in the capital market will also affect corporate decisions on energy conservation and emission reduction. Finally, Zhang et al [ 12 ] found that arrogant CEOs will increase corporate pollutant emissions, while corporate executives who have political connections will reduce pollutant emissions and increase energy conservation [ 1 ]. Although a significant amount literature has discussed the issue of corporate pollutant emissions, there are few studies from the macroeconomic perspective.…”

High-Speed Rail and Energy Productivity: Evidence from China

“…Moreover, an interaction term between province and trend is introduced to capture provincial characteristics which cannot be captured at the city level, a very demanding specification which allows for regional trends. For example, the political turnover for a certain province may affect its environmental governance and economic performance (Li and Zhou, 2005), which further affect energy structure (Kong et al, 2021) and energy productivity. In addition, the reasons for the consideration of the interaction term between province and trend are as follows.…”