ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1601165
This article is part of the Research TopicA Strategic Nexus for Enhancing System Resilience: Advancing Energy Efficiency, Reducing Carbon Emissions, Managing Water Resources, and Controlling Air Pollution in the Industrial SectorView all 7 articles
Catalyzing Co-Benefits: How Cross-Regional Coordination Accelerates Pollution and Carbon Reduction in China's Yangtze River Economic Belt
Provisionally accepted
- 1Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China
- 2Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
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China faces the dual challenge of pollution control and carbon reduction amid rapid urbanization and industrialization, while traditional environmental policies struggle to meet the demands of cross-regional coordinated governance. Using the Outline of YREB as a policy context, this study systematically evaluates the co-benefits and mechanisms of cross-regional coordination policies on pollution and carbon reduction. Based on panel data from 259 Chinese prefecture-level cities (2014-2019), we employ a coupling coordination model and a difference-in-differences approach to assess policy effectiveness. The findings reveal that: (1) Cross-regional coordination policies significantly enhance pollution-carbon synergy in YREB cities through structural integration effects, with the impact strengthening over time and remaining robust across tests; (2) The policy facilitates long-term pollution-carbon synergy governance through three key pathways-industrial green transition (structural), clean energy system co-construction (technological), and cross-regional low-carbon technology diffusion (knowledge-based)-driving a shift in environmental governance from policy-driven external enforcement to development-driven endogenous demand. This study highlights that cross-regional coordination is not only a tool for spatial economic integration but also a structural driver of sustainable environmental governance, providing a novel policy pathway for China's dual-carbon goals and contributing to global climate governance.
Keywords: Cross-regional Coordinated Development Policy, Pollution and Carbon Reduction, Co-benefits, Yangtze River Economic Belt, Mechanism analysis
Received: 27 Mar 2025; Accepted: 04 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yu, Zhao, Zang and Qu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Zebin Zhao, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China
Aiyu Qu, Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
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