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Hu et al. Carbon Footprints 2024;3:16 https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/cf.2024.28 Page 3 of 16

Literature review
China has raised policies to promote green, circular, and low-carbon development of industrial parks, such
as economic and technological development zones, ecological industrial parks, and low-carbon industrial
parks. Few studies have focused on the effects of the presence of industrial parks on the overall carbon
emissions of a region. Existing studies often focus on the carbon emissions accounting of one or a few
parks, using methods such as the IPCC greenhouse gas inventory method, life cycle assessment (LCA), or
input-output (IO) method for further analyses [12-17] . Research into carbon emissions from large parks is
limited [18,19] . However, as an important policy vehicle, how the construction of various types of industrial
parks affects cities and whether it helps cities reduce carbon emissions are worthy of serious exploration.
This study analyzes the effects of constructing industrial parks from the perspective of city carbon emission
reduction.

When examining the effects of a policy on a certain indicator for a region, the difference-in-differences
(DID) method and its extensions have been widely adopted. For example, using balanced panel data
covering 270 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2018, Meng et al. applied the DID method and
the mediated effects model to study the impacts of national resource-based cities’ sustainable development
planning policies on pollution emission intensity and found that these policies significantly reduced
[20]
pollution emission intensity . For industrial parks, the EIDP has been the focus of studies investigating the
emission reduction effects of different EIDPs, the factors involved, heterogeneity with respect to
development paths and geographic locations, and spatial spillover effects. For example, Nie et al. assessed
the impacts of national-level eco-industrial parks on low-carbon development and reported that with
national eco-industrial parks, the carbon intensity of pilot cities decreased by 7.2%, suppressing the peak of
[21]
the environmental Kuznets curve and helping to reach the inflection point earlier . The environmental
impacts of three types of park policies, including EIDP, LCIP, and recycling policy, were also analyzed, with
the empirical results showing that all three types of park policies significantly reduced regional industrial
SO emissions .
[22]
2
Going beyond the question of whether industrial park construction can reduce regional carbon emissions,
scholars have delved into this question in greater depth. The first concerns the timing of the impacts, which
[22]
are generally lagged and long-term, with a lag period of 2 to 3 years . There are also heterogeneity analyses
[22]
examining the intensity of environmental regulations , city size , spatial location , resource
[23]
[23]
[23]
endowment , and the number of parks . The second concerns the mechanism of the impacts. Specifically,
[23]
the construction of industrial parks may affect urban carbon emissions through a variety of channels, and
the mediating variables widely investigated include improving the level of environmental regulation ,
[24]
[24]
enhancing the level of green innovation , increasing energy use efficiency and upgrading the energy use
structure, and increasing the level of local technology . The third issue concerns whether the impacts
[25]
exhibit spatial spillover effects. Many studies have shown that there are significant spatial spillover effects on
the urban environment and carbon emissions within a certain distance, which can lead to carbon emission
[25]
reductions in neighboring cities . The fourth addresses the potential heterogeneity in effects, such as those
with respect to the development paths of industrial parks and the underlying transformation drivers of
EIDPs, including ETDZs and National High-tech Industrial Parks. Cao found that the EIDPs transformed
from ETDZs exhibited greater impacts on a city’s SO and CO emissions reductions. Besides industrial
2
2
parks, other factors also influence carbon emissions . Yang et al. analyzed zero-carbon energy strategies at
[25]
the national level, using a by-production approach to reveal how factors such as energy intensity contribute
to carbon reduction. This complements the analysis of industrial parks by highlighting broader energy
policy effects . Additionally, urban expansion is another crucial factor. Zhang et al. used machine learning
[26]
to investigate the impact of land-use changes in Wuhan, Hubei Province, on surface temperature and
[27]
carbon emissions . They found significant increases in carbon emissions arise due to expanding urban