Role of environmental ownership and associated parameters to assess green patents in technologies with environmental scanning system as a controlling factor

Does smart city pilot improve green total factor productivity? Evidence from Chinese cities

In recent years, the construction of smart cities has gradually become an effective means of addressing urban economic and environmental challenges. Based on panel data of 249 Chinese cities from 2005 to 2020, this study uses a super-efficiency epsilon-based measure model and a Malmquist-Luenberger index to calculate the urban green total factor productivity (GTFP). Using the smart city pilot as a quasi-natural experiment, the time-varying difference-in-difference (DID) method is applied to determine the causal effect of smart city pilot on GTFP. Results show that smart city pilot increases urban GTFP in China, and a series of robust analyses have verified the reliability of the results. The heterogeneity analysis results show that the smart city pilot policy has a more significant positive effect on urban GTFP in the eastern and central regions, the high population group, and the high per capita GDP group. The mediating analysis further suggests that smart city pilot positively affects technological innovations and human capital which promotes urban GTFP. These findings are of great significance for smart city construction and coordinating the relationship between urban economic development and environmental protection.

On the nexus between CO2 emissions and the air transportation sector in the European Union and Turkey: accessing evidence from wavelet coherence analysis

The coronavirus disease has had a devastating impact on the airline industry worldwide. However, the cancellation of flights has also enormously reduced CO2 emissions in the air. The present study empirically explores the environmental impact of the sectoral lockdown within the EU28 and Turkey by leveraging the wavelet coherence transform (WCT) technique. The results revealed that there is a positive correlation between the number of passengers carried and CO2 emissions. In the short run, during the pandemic, there is a strong positive linkage between the number of passengers carried and CO2 emissions, while in the long run, there are also positive and meaningful relationships between the number of passengers carried and CO2 emissions between 2014 and 2022. The result also indicates that, on a quarterly basis, there was a sharp decline in CO2 emissions caused by the airline industry during the period of 2020-2021. The reverse effect was also detected, which has empirically validated the hypothesis that, during the pandemic, pollution in the atmosphere has declined because of the cancellation of flights. This confirms the hypothesis that there is positive feedback causality between passengers carried and CO2 emissions. This finding has also been supported in the existing energy literature. These outcomes have implications for environmental sustainability targets in the EU and Turkey, as the recovery of international passenger traffic will proceed at a very close pace. More policy caveats are elucidated in the conclusion section.