Can Expanding Cultural Consumption Improve Urban Air Quality? An Analysis Based on China’s Cultural Consumption Pilot Policy

As an important reform exploration to promote economic transformation and upgrading in China, can the national cultural consumption pilot policy improve urban air quality? What are the impact paths? Based on a theoretical analysis of the intrinsic mechanism of expanding cultural consumption affecting urban air quality, this paper constructs the DID model with a quasi-natural experiment, namely the national cultural consumption pilot, to assess the impact of expanding cultural consumption on urban air quality. The results show that: expanding cultural consumption has a significant improvement effect on urban air quality, and the emission reduction effect is also increasing year by year; the heterogeneity analysis shows that expanding cultural consumption has a stronger pollution reduction effect in cities north of the Qinling–Huaihe line, and the effect on air quality is more significant in non-resource cities; the mechanism test indicates that government intervention and public participation have a significant moderating role in the emission reduction effect of cultural consumption. In other words, the higher the level of government intervention and the greater the degree of public participation in the cultural consumption pilot, the stronger the pollution reduction effect of expanding cultural consumption. In addition, cultural consumption has an impact on urban air quality mainly through the industrial structure effect and innovation effect. The findings of this study provide policy insights to further promote the emission reduction effect of cultural consumption and promote urban air quality.