Research on China Cities’ Total Factor Productivity of Carbon Emission: Based on Decoupling Effect

Economic development depends on energy consumption, which is a major source of carbon emission. How to achieve economic decarbonization has become one of the key questions urgently needing to be solved on the road of carbon peak and carbon neutral development in China. Advancing total factor productivity (TFP) of carbon emission is an important way to promote economic decarbonization. For the carbon emission TFP, current research is mainly conducted from province level or an industry perspective, and studies its deference with various geographical locations, economic development levels, urbanization levels, etc., lacking the research that combines the decoupling effect to carbon emission TFP. The carbon emission TFP of Chinese cities and how to improve it remain unclear. Therefore, based on Tapio decoupling theory, this paper firstly analyzed the decoupling effect of China’s 284 cities from 2005 to 2019, and aggregated the cities into four groups according to the decoupling effect. Then, using the DEA–Malmquist index, this paper researched the carbon emission TFP and its driving factors based on the aggregation. The result shows that weak decoupling is the main decoupling status in China. As a whole, carbon emission TFP of Chinese cities does not perform well, but it shows a growth trend over time. Strong decoupling cities outperform expansive negative decoupling cities on carbon emission TFP. Technical change and pure technical efficiency change have inhibiting effect and promoting effect on carbon emission TFP, respectively, which are the main factors for the difference of carbon emission TFP between strong decoupling cities and expansive negative decoupling cities. Based on these findings, some common but differentiated recommendations are provided for improving Chinese cities’ carbon emission TFP.