Improvement of China’s healthy city construction policies from the perspective of policy instruments

This study aims to examine the current policy documents on building healthy cities in China. This will provide ideas for improving these policies and fostering the growth of healthy cities. The NVivo software was used to analyze policy tools and construction areas for healthy city development. Policy documents on healthy urban development issued by central government authorities from 2009 to 2023 were selected. Demand, supply, and environmental policy were the three categories of recognized policy instruments. Health services, health environment, health culture, health society, and healthy people are the five pillars of a healthy city. This paper analyzes policy documents on healthy urban development in China from two dimensions. The policy tool is on the X-axis, and the field of healthy city construction is on the Y-axis. Regarding the dimension of policy instruments, supply-based policies were used most frequently, at 62.9%. Environmental policies are implemented 26.5% of the time in conjunction with economic policies. Following this, demand-based policies have a frequency of 10.6%. From the perspective of two-dimensional shapes on policy instruments and healthy city building domains, each of the five fields of healthy city construction focuses on using three policy instruments. From the two-dimensional perspective of policy tools and healthy city building domains, each of the five fields of healthy city construction focuses on using three policy instruments. The results show that China's current healthy city policies use a mix of policies to manage supply, environment, and demand. Most of these policies are based on supply, with high levels of government involvement. However, more policies are needed. They encourage individuals, families, communities, and social groups to participate freely in the policy process. In the future, the combination of policy tools can be quickly adjusted to enhance the effectiveness of policy implementation. At the national level, a strong commitment is made to promote healthy urban development. However, the use of policy tools across different construction sectors needs to be evenly distributed. It must be acknowledged that the effectiveness of policy tools in enhancing efficiency requires further investigation. However, the current study needs to be revised. Differences in the understanding of policy instruments may lead to different results, thus affecting the effectiveness of policy recommendations.