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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Urban Rail Transit, Industrial Structure
Advancement, and Green Economic Growth
– Evidence from Chinese Metro-Opening Cities
1
School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
2
School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China
Submission date: 2024-03-13
Final revision date: 2024-05-20
Acceptance date: 2024-05-27
Online publication date: 2024-10-07
Publication date: 2025-04-04
Corresponding author
Yunbin Shen
School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology, 200237, Shanghai, China
School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology, 200237, Shanghai, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2025;34(4):3671-3688
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Research on green economic growth is gradually expanding into the transportation sector, but
fewer studies have examined the relationship between the development of urban transportation
infrastructure, such as subway systems, and green economic growth in cities. Based on the panel data
of 41 metro-opening cities in China from 2007 to 2019, this paper attempts to answer whether and how
the development of metro systems affects green economic growth in Chinese cities. The empirical
study found that: (1) Metro system development significantly contributes to green economic growth
at the city level. Each additional 100 Chinese miles (50 km) of metro system development can lead to
a 2.2% increase in the green economic growth of the city. (2) In the robustness test, four methods are
used to show that the empirical results are robust and reliable. (3) Heterogeneity analysis shows that the
impact of metro system development on green growth varies according to the degree of connectivity
of the metro system, the level of green economic growth, and the level of productive service industry
agglomeration. (4) Mechanism analysis shows that the development of the metro promotes green
economic growth through the advanced industrial structure, which has a significant partial mediating
effect.
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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