Abstract
New urbanization construction is important for promoting sustainable economic growth in resource-based cities and can help resource-based cities achieve a sustainable development model with efficient resource allocation and green and low-carbon industrial transformation. Based on the background of the comprehensive pilot policy of new urbanization, we examined whether new urbanization construction promoted the economic growth of resource-based cities using 2011-2017 data on prefecture-level cities and the difference-in-differences (DID) method. It was found that new urbanization construction significantly promoted the growth in GDP per capita of resource-based cities, with a coefficient estimate of 0.1330, and this result passed a robustness test. The mechanism test indicated that new urbanization construction promoted the economic growth of resource-based cities by improving the efficiency of resource allocation and promoting industrial structure upgrading, with interaction term coefficient estimates of 0.1465 and 0.2929, respectively. Heterogeneity analysis showed that the policy effect of new urbanization construction was stronger in resource-rich cities than in resource-poor cities, significant in energy-based resource-based cities but not in metal-based and other resource-based cities, and significant in resource-based cities in the eastern and western regions of China but not in the central region. This study provides government departments implementing new urbanization policies with the results of a policy performance assessment of new urbanization construction for resource-based cities and feasible policy recommendations for the sustainable transformation of resource-based cities.
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Data availability
The datasets utilized and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Notes
Resource-based cities are defined as cities (including prefecture-level administrative regions such as prefecture-level cities and regions and county-level administrative regions such as county-level cities and counties) whose leading industry is the exploitation and processing of natural resources such as minerals and forests in the region. The definition comes from the National Sustainable Development Plan for Resource-Based Cities (2013-2020).
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Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions, which significantly contributed to improving this manuscript.
Funding
This research was funded by the “Research on the Construction of Digital Villages, Industrial Structure Upgrading and Economic Growth of County-Level Cities in Gansu Province” project of the Gansu Provincial Natural Science Foundation (22JR5RA159); the “Smartphone use, human capital deepening and farm household income growth” project of the Northwest Normal University Research Capacity Enhancement Programme for Young Teachers (NWNU-SKQN2022-32); and the "Research on the Mechanism and Path of Digital Economy to Enable Common Wealth in Urban and Rural Areas" project of the Postgraduate Innovation Project of Lanzhou University (2023CXZX-018).
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conceptualization, Zhiliang Yang; methodology, Ying Cao; resources, Junhong Du and Ying Cao; writing—original draft preparation, conceptualization, Zhiliang Yang; methodology, Ying Cao; resources, Junhong Du; writing—review and editing, Zhiliang Yang; supervision, Ying Cao and Junhong Du; project administration, Zhiliang Yang. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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The data used in this paper can be downloaded at:https://data.cnki.net/yearBook/single?nav=%E5%85%A8%E5%9B%BD%E8%8C%83%E5%9B%B4&id=N2022040095; China's resource-based city definition website is http://www.gov.cn/zwgk/2013-12/03/content_2540070.htm; The list of the first batch of new township construction pilots is from https://finance.ifeng.com/a/20150109/13416973_0.shtml; The list of the second batch of new township construction pilots is from https://politics.people.com.cn/n/2015/1127/c1001-27863939.html; The list of the third batch of new township construction pilots is from http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2016-12/07/content_5144553.htm#1; The National Sustainable Development Plan for Resource-Based Cities (2013-2020) is from https://www.gov.cn/zwgk/2013-12/03/content_2540070.htm.
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Yang, Z., Cao, Y. & Du, J. The Impact of New Urbanization Construction on Sustainable Economic Growth of Resource-Based Cities. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 96860–96874 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-29171-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-29171-8