What Motivates Local Sustainability Policy Action in China? The Case of Low-Carbon City Pilot Program

An increasing volume of literature has sought to identify factors that motivate cities to pursue sustainability and adopt climate policies. However, most empirical studies were done in Western countries, where relatively high local autonomy and low pressure on industrial growth create conditions for spontaneous policy innovations in sustainability. This paper uses China's Low-Carbon City Pilot Program as a case to investigate motivations for local sustainability actions in an authoritarian context. Our event history analyses confirm the effects of multi-level governance on local sustainability initiatives in China, particularly horizontal competition across jurisdictions, priorities and preferences of upper-level authorities, as well as local determinants including leadership, capacity, politics, and environmental stress. The findings contribute to the comparative urban governance scholarship by highlighting the unique feature of experimentation under hierarchy in shaping urban sustainability policymaking in China.

Automated summary

This paper examines the motivations for local sustainability actions in an authoritarian context using China's Low-Carbon City Pilot Program as a case study. The findings confirm the impact of multi-level governance on local sustainability initiatives in China, emphasizing the importance of experimentation under hierarchy in shaping urban sustainability policymaking in China.