The Effect of Innovation-Driven Strategy on Green Economic Development in China—An Empirical Study of Smart Cities

Of all the countries presently industrializing, both going green and going smart ideas can be likened to green development, in that they are helping to address or identify new routes out of environment and development conflicts. Environmental pollution issues loom large for China, and the scale of its transformation makes its proposed solutions of widespread interest. China has begun to decouple some environmental pressure from economic growth, and an innovation-driven strategy is proposed to deal with the synergic development between the economy and environment. Considering both positive and negative effects of the innovation-driven strategy on green economic development, the aim of this paper is to find out the influence path and mechanism of policies and measures of the innovation strategy on green economic development, through the empirical analysis of panel data of 47 pilot smart cities in China from 2009 to 2017. The results show that the innovation-driven strategy has a positive effect on green development, while different innovation-driven indicators play different roles in the promotion of economic green development. Practically, this research provides a decision-making reference for sustainable development policy formulation in developing countries, especially in emerging economies.