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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Highways and Green Economic Growth in China’s
Yangtze River Economic Belt: Mediating Role
of Green Technology Innovation
1
Lishui City Great Garden Construction and Development Center, Lishui, China
2
School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai, China
3
Chongqing Technology and Business University, Chongqing, China
4
International College of Football, Tongji University, Shanghai, China
Submission date: 2024-03-19
Final revision date: 2024-04-28
Acceptance date: 2024-05-13
Online publication date: 2024-08-02
Publication date: 2025-01-09
Corresponding author
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2025;34(2):1565-1579
KEYWORDS
highwaysgreen economic growthgreen technology innovationthe Yangtze river economic beltmarket access
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Highway construction reduces the production costs of enterprises, which is conducive
to their increased investment in environmental management and the adoption of green production
technologies, thereby promoting regional green economic growth. Traditional research mainly focuses
on the pollution problem in the transportation infrastructure and transportation process, and it is difficult
to explain the spatial spillover problem of the green economy brought by transportation. We measured
the shortest passage time and market access of the Yangtze River Economic Belt highway from 2005 to
2019. Meanwhile, we measured the green total factor productivity based on the Malmquist-Luenberger
index. The empirical results show that highway construction has a significant role in promoting green
economic growth in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. However, there is obvious regional heterogeneity
in the degree of effect. Market access has the largest effect in large cities, followed by medium cities,
and has the smallest effect on small cities. This suggests that there is an environmental “bottoming-out
effect” in highway-induced industrial transfer. Further, we find that green technology innovation
is the mechanism by which highways affect green economic growth.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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| eISSN: | 2083-5906 |
| ISSN: | 1230-1485 |
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