New-type urbanization ecologically reshaping China

Addressing critical ecological issues is one of the core objectives of the Chinese National New-type Urbanization Plan (NTU). However, there is not enough research to clearly demonstrate NTU's impact on environmental pollution. There is a need to provide solid empirical evidence from evaluation of the effects of NTU on environmental pollution. This study implements a series of propensity score matching and difference-in-difference analyses based on a comprehensive panel dataset spanning the period 2006–2017. The quantitative results show that NTU is largely conducive to curbing environmental pollution, with PM(2.5) concentrations as a proxy, and its robustness is demonstrated by the parallel trend test and placebo test. Further, the ecological effect of NTU is heterogeneous in terms of city level, location, and former pollution level. Small and medium cities benefit more than larger or central cities from NTU, and eastern cities exhibit better air quality improvement than cities in western regions. In addition, through quantile regression, we find that the positive outcomes of NTU are restricted by level of pollution, i.e., heavier pollution adds greatly to the difficulty of abatement.