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Keywords

new infrastructure, smart city pilots, green innovation, DID

Abstract

The rapid development of new infrastructure based on information networks has brought significant enabling effects, providing standardized services in the form of data and intelligence for green innovation activities and the allocation of related elements in the new development stage, which is an important support for new development and high-quality development. At the same time, the construction of new infrastructure gathers advanced elements such as a new generation of information technology, high-end equipment, talents and knowledge, empowers the transformation of traditional industries and the development of emerging industries, drives green technology innovation, and provides impetus for the green and low-carbon transformation of cities. As a gathering place of various resource elements and economic activities, cities are the core carriers for promoting new infrastructure construction and green innovation. On the premise of adapting to the background of the era of big data, smart cities carry out a certain degree of transformation of urban basic fields through various information technology means, and then gradually make cities more intelligent. In addition, based on information technologies such as big data, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and digital twins, it comprehensively promotes the deep integration of digital technology systems and urban development, giving birth to multi-field application scenarios such as smart transportation, smart medical care, and smart elderly care, which can effectively promote the digital and intelligent transformation of cities. The construction of smart city is inseparable from the new infrastructure as the base, which complements and is inseparable from the construction of new infrastructure, and the fields involved are highly consistent with the content of new infrastructure construction. Smart cities are advanced products of the digital economy, and the digital economy is guaranteed by the construction of new infrastructure. From the perspective of the top-level design of the smart city, the new infrastructure is the underlying architecture in the construction of the smart city, and the new infrastructure is closely related to the goal of the smart city, and is an important part of the decision-making centre system of the smart city, which plays an important role. Therefore, the smart city pilot can be regarded as a useful attempt to build new infrastructure.Using the panel data of 231 Chinese cities from 2008 to 2022, this paper takes the construction of smart cities as a quasi-natural experiment in the construction of new infrastructure, and constructs a difference-in-difference model to evaluate the impact of new infrastructure construction on the level of urban green innovation. The results show that new infrastructure construction has a significant effect on the level of urban green innovation, and the conclusion is still reliable after a series of robustness tests such as parallel trend test, PSM-DID and placebo. Sub-regional studies show that new infrastructure construction have a more significant role in promoting urban green innovation in the central and eastern regions, but not in the western and northeastern regions. Further heterogeneity analysis shows that new infrastructure construction has a more obvious effect on improving the level of green innovation in cities with lower administrative levels and larger populations, but has no obvious positive effect on cities with higher administrative levels and small and medium-sized cities.

DOI

10.16315/j.stm.2024.05.007

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