IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i3p1392-d734341.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

High-Speed Railway Opening and High-Quality Development of Cities in China: Does Environmental Regulation Enhance the Effects?

Author

Listed:
  • Yuxian Jiang

    (School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China)

  • Xiang Xiao

    (School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
    Research Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China)

  • Xiaoyue Li

    (School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China)

  • Ge Ge

    (School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China)

Abstract

The continuous improvement of transportation infrastructure is an important support for achieving high-quality development, while the high-quality characteristics of development will inevitably promote the process of economic and social sustainability. From the dual perspectives of economic transformation and people’s social livelihoods, we regard the opening of a high-speed railway (HSR) in China’s cities as a quasi-natural experiment, and utilize the difference-in-difference (DID) method to examine the impact of improved transportation infrastructure on the high-quality development of prefecture-level cities and its action mechanism. This study is the first to incorporate HSR openings and environmental regulation into the same framework, focusing on the high-quality development problem of cities. The empirical results reveal that: (1) the opening of an HSR can advance industrial structure upgrading and increase social employment level, thereby promoting the high-quality development of cities; (2) the intensity of environmental regulation is an important action mechanism that affects such relationships, but it presents two different influences on an HSR’s industrial effect and employment effect, that is, inhibition and reinforcement, respectively; and (3) urban heterogeneity tests illustrate that an HSR opening plays a more significant role in promoting the high-quality development of China’s eastern region cities and non-resource-based cities. Our findings are beneficial to improve the effectiveness and accuracy of decision-makers’ investment in transportation infrastructure as well as to facilitate the benign interaction between the national HSR policy and local environmental regulation strategies, thereby achieving the high-quality and sustainable development of urban economy and society.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuxian Jiang & Xiang Xiao & Xiaoyue Li & Ge Ge, 2022. "High-Speed Railway Opening and High-Quality Development of Cities in China: Does Environmental Regulation Enhance the Effects?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-27, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1392-:d:734341
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1392/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1392/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chunhua Luo & Dianlong Wei & Wunhong Su & Jinjing Lu, 2023. "Association between Regional Digitalization and High-Quality Economic Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-19, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1392-:d:734341. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.