ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Health Economics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1655119
Does New Infrastructure Improve Public Health? Evidence from Smart City Pilot Program in China
Provisionally accepted
Sha Zhou1
JIA REN2*- 1Hunan First Normal University, Changsha, China
- 2Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
ABSTRACT: As a key pillar of new infrastructure development, smart city construction seeks to meet residents' growing demand for high quality urban living by creating environments that are technologically integrated. To identify the causal effect of new infrastructure development on public health, we exploit the staggered launch of the national smart city pilot program in China as a quasi-natural experiment. We apply a multi-period difference-in-differences approach with 18,993 individual-level observations from 2010–2020. Our empirical results indicate that smart city construction significantly improves the health of residents, though the effect emerges with a time lag. The findings are consistently supported across robustness checks. Mechanism analysis reveals that smart city construction improves public health by raising income levels, increasing opportunities for physical exercise, and improving air quality. Further analysis shows that the health effects of smart city construction are heterogeneous across regions and city sizes. Theoretical implications and targeted policy recommendations are provided to promote public health in the context of smart city advancement.
Keywords: Smart city, New infrastructure, Digital, Public Health, China
Received: 27 Jun 2025; Accepted: 28 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhou and REN. 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: JIA REN, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.