Does smart city policy improve corporate green technology innovation? Evidence from Chinese listed companies

As a new pattern of urbanization, smart cities offer a set of initiatives to achieve a win-win situation for both environmental protection and economic development. This paper aims to explore the influence of smart city policy (SCP) on green technology innovation (GTI) by Chinese listed enterprises. Employing the difference-in-differences (DID) approach, the results show that SCP promotes enterprises’ GTI. This finding remains valid after various robustness tests, which include the parallel trend test, PSM-DID, placebo test, the substitution of estimation model, replacement of dependent variable, and the exclusion of the impacts of other policies. Additional tests reveal that SCP improves GTI through government environmental subsidy, corporate environmental awareness, and research and development investments. Furthermore, the heterogeneity analysis suggests that our findings are more prominent in subsamples during the growth stage, in high-tech industries, and in eastern regions. Our research is vital to the urban ecological environment and high-quality economic development.