ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1660843
This article is part of the Research TopicCreating an Economy that is not Reliant on Coal, Oil, and GasView all 4 articles
Do Sustainable Development Policies in Resource-Based Cities Contribute to Industrial Structure Upgrading? Empirical Evidence from China
Provisionally accepted
Tong Tong*
Tiegang Zhang- Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China
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This study analyzes how China’s Sustainable Development Plan of Resource-Based Cities, 2013-2020(SDPRC), which was implemented in 2013, affects the industrial structure upgrading in Chinese Resource-Based Cities (RBCs). Taking SDPRC as a quasi-natural experiment, we assess this effect by using the panel data of prefecture-level cities from 2007 to 2023. The results of the study found that: (1) the coefficient of SDPRC on the RBC’s industrial structure upgrading is positive and passes the significance level test, indicating that SDPRC promotes the industrial structure upgrading of RBCs. (2) The SDPRC promotes the industrial structure upgrading of RBC through the green technology innovation effect, the human resource effect, and the FDI effect. (3) In the heterogeneity analysis, it is found that the promotion effect of SDPRC on the industrial structure upgrading of RBCs is significant in RBCs located at the southeast side of Hu Huanyong Line. The effect of policies on promoting industrial structure upgrading is also more pronounced in regions with higher per capita GDP.
Keywords: Resource-based cities, Sustainable development policy, Industrial structure upgrading, GreenTechnological Innovation, human resource, FDI
Received: 07 Jul 2025; Accepted: 15 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tong and Zhang. 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: Tong Tong, tongtongahs@163.com
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