The impact of green bonds on urban low-carbon transformation: the role of digital technology innovation and energy structure

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🔬研究者:Validates green bonds as a mechanism for urban low-carbon transition and highlights spatial spillover boundaries, contributing to sustainable finance literature.

🏢実務担当者:Demonstrates that green bonds can finance digital technology and energy structure improvements; firms should align green bond use with these channels for maximum impact.

🏛政策担当者:Supports policies that strengthen financial marketization, green bond certification, and environmental regulations to amplify green bond effectiveness; spatial spillover suggests coordination across neighboring cities.

Purpose Under the background of deepening global climate governance and optimizing energy structure (ES), carbon emission reduction has been highly valued by all countries, and all countries are actively promoting urban low carbon transformation (ULCT). Under the global trend, as the world’s largest carbon emitter, China actively promotes carbon emission reduction, emphasizing that ULCT is the key to achieving the goal of carbon peak carbon neutralization. To achieve the “double carbon” goal, China has established a green financial reform system to provide institutional and financial support for low-carbon economic. Green bonds (GB) are a key sustainable finance instrument that channels capital to environmental projects such as renewable energy and green infrastructure. European Investment Bank early issuances GB in 2007, a French power-generation firm’s first climate-oriented corporate bond in 2013 and a Brazilian food company’s first agriculture-focused GB in 2015, the global GB market has expanded rapidly, and China has become the largest GB issuer among emerging economies (de Deus et al., 2022). Based on the resource-based view and resource allocation efficiency theory, GB play an important role in promoting ULCT by upgrading digital technology and optimizing ES (Ren et al., 2025). Under the global ecological pressure and the goal of sustainable development, research on the impact mechanism of GB on ULCT has profound enlightenment for improving green financial policy system and realizing ULCT in emerging market countries. This paper not only enriches the cross-research of green finance and sustainable development theory but also provides empirical insights for emerging market countries to build efficient, transparent and sustainable GB markets and contributes to promoting green economic development. Design/methodology/approach This paper empirically tests the impact mechanism and spatial spillover effect of GB on ULCT in 279 prefecture-level cities in China from 2014 to 2024 by using fixed effect and spatial econometric methods and constructs a theoretical model framework. We find that (1) GB significantly promote ULCT, with this effect remaining robust after theoretical model derivation and empirical test. This effect is stronger in regions with higher levels of financial marketization, better GB subject ratings and stronger environmental regulations. (2) The mechanism analysis reveals that GB promote ULCT by fostering digital technology innovation (DTI) and optimizing ES. (3) GB have significant positive spatial spillover effect in eastern China, but not significant in central and western. The spatial effect attenuation boundary is 350 km. A significant positive spatial spillover effect occurs when cities are within 350 km of each other, while no spillover effect is observed beyond this distance. (4) There is a “carbon curse” phenomenon in resource-based cities. Findings GB significantly promote ULCT, with this effect remaining robust after theoretical model derivation and empirical test. This effect is stronger in regions with higher levels of financial marketization, better GB subject ratings and stronger environmental regulations. The mechanism analysis reveals that GB promote ULCT by fostering DTI and optimizing ES. GB have significant positive spatial spillover effect in eastern China, but not significant in central and western. The spatial effect attenuation boundary is 350 km. A significant positive spatial spillover effect occurs when cities are within 350 km of each other, while no spillover effect is observed beyond this distance. There is a “carbon curse” phenomenon in resource-based cities. GB is effective to break the carbon curse dilemma of resource-based cities, but it is ineffective for non-resource-based cities. Research limitations/implications This study has several limitations: First, due to data availability, the analysis is conducted at the prefecture-level city scale using data from 279 cities. Future research could adopt a quasi-natural experimental design based on firms’ issuance of GB to examine its impact on ULCT at the corporate level. Second, this study focuses on the economic and environmental effects of GB, ignoring social benefits, such as social identity and corporate social responsibility. Future studies should incorporate these social dimensions to better assess the broader role of GB in promoting public participation and support for environmental protection. Practical implications Firstly, the empirical results show that GB can promote ULCT. The government should support the issuance of GB, exempt value-added tax and reduce or exempt enterprise income tax on interest income from GB. The government provides issuance fees and interest subsidies. A streamlined approval mechanism can be adopted featuring dedicated personnel, special review, prompt processing and priority acceptance. Mandatory environmental disclosure should be integrated into green project assessment. GB certifiers should be subject to annual evaluation and dynamic management. It helps to improve urban air and the quality of life of residents. Government should enhance public environmental awareness, leverage digital media and online platforms to spread environmental knowledge and guide residents to adopt green lifestyles via public communication and community outreach. Secondly, DTI and ES are the channels through which GB promote ULCT. Enterprises should adopt GB financing to prioritize low-carbon digital technologies, establish digital low-carbon management and carbon monitoring platforms, optimize energy processes via digital tools and lower carbon emissions per unit output. They should also prioritize clean energy, enhance full-cycle energy management, focus on rooftop photovoltaic and wind power and advance clean energy transition. The government should build a repository and matching platform for green projects and digital tech enterprises, provide fast-track approval for digital-enabled GB, integrate ES optimization into local performance assessments and set up a GB risk compensation fund to cover digital and energy transition risks. Finally, GB promote ULCT more effectively in regions with strong financial marketization and ER. The government should promote financial management services, introduce incentive policies for GB financing such as approved issuance or deferred repayment, enhance GB secondary market liquidity through central bank reloans and expanded collateral, and foster a sound financial environment for GB. It should improve carbon emission standards, emission permits and environmental credit evaluation systems, establish unified identification and disclosure rules and promote ULCT. Enterprises should optimize GB financing strategies, strengthen information disclosure, improve market-oriented financing efficiency and form a virtuous cycle of “strong environmental constraints-standardized green financing-low-carbon transformation”. Social implications The results show that GB can promote ULCT and generate positive social effects. By directing financial resources to low-carbon projects, GB help improve urban environmental quality, reduce carbon emissions, and enhance residents' well-being. DTI and ES optimization are key channels in this process, as they improve carbon monitoring, energy management, and clean energy use. Moreover, stronger financial marketization and ER can further strengthen the social benefits of GB. Therefore, improving the GB system is important for promoting environmental governance, technological progress, and sustainable urban development. Originality/value Inspired by Sartzetakis (2021), this paper constructs a theoretical model framework including GB and ULCT, improves the lack of theoretical models in the field of GB affecting ULCT, discusses whether and how GB are useful for ULCT and makes up for the shortcomings of relevant research. The existing literature focuses on green finance versus green innovation (Benlemlih et al., 2023), carbon emissions (Saha and Maji, 2025), sustainable development (Solangi et al., 2025; Kwilinski et al., 2023), but lack of a comprehensive study on the impact of GB on ULCT, this paper makes up for this gap and proposes a mechanism channel. Based on resource-based view theory, DTI improves the efficiency and transparency of GB, thus promoting ULCT. Based on resource allocation efficiency theory (Ren et al., 2025), GB promote ULCT by optimizing ES channels. This paper makes up for the lack of regional differences and attenuation boundaries of spatial spillover effects in existing literature.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.1108/ijoem-08-2025-1736first seen 2026-07-10 05:16:46 · last seen 2026-07-10 05:28:57