High-speed Railway and Green Total Factor Productivity: Taking Industrial Structure as a Mediator

The development of high-speed rail (HSR) contributes to time-space compression and accelerates economic transformation as well as industrial structure optimization. Using a time-varying difference-in-difference estimator, this study first explores the HSR’s impact on green total factor productivity (GTFP) in China’s 285 cities from 2003 to 2019. We then demonstrate how industrial structure moderates HSR’s effect on GTFP from two perspectives: advanced industrial structure (IS) and rationalized industrial structure (IR). Our results show that the magnitude of HSR’s effect exhibits considerable region-based heterogeneity. We notice that HSR stimulates GTFP across 285 cities for a full sample. The development of HSR indirectly stimulates GTFP through the development of IS and decelerates through IR for a whole sample and large cities. In non-provincial capital cities, HSR directly promotes GTFP and indirectly impedes it through IR. In the provincial capital and eastern cities, HSR indirectly improves GTFP through IS. In central-western cities, HSR deteriorates GTFP by promoting IR. In small and medium-sized cities, HSR directly inhibits GTFP, while industrial structure plays an insignificant role in an indirect way. Policy implications are documented to enhance the HSR’s economic and environmental aspects.