The impact of energy-consuming right trading policy on urban ecological resilience: evidence from China

The energy-consuming right trading policy is an important policy initiative by the government to use market mechanisms to curb energy consumption and improve energy efficiency, thereby exerts a profound impact on urban ecological resilience. Based on panel data of 243 cities from 2006 to 2019, this study employs the Propensity Score Matching-Difference-in-Differences (PSM-DID) method and a mediation effect model to assess the impact of the energy-consuming right trading policy on urban ecological resilience and its underlying mechanisms. The results reveal: ①The policy significantly enhances urban ecological resilience, and this finding is validated by a series of robustness checks, such as the parallel trend test. ② The energy-consuming right trading policy can enhance the ecological resilience by reducing coal consumption and driving green technology innovation. ③ The policy exhibits significant heterogeneous effects across cities with different characteristics: it exerts a significantly positive impact on urban ecological resilience in both high-income and low-income cities, with a more pronounced effect in low-income cities; it has a notably positive effect on cities with a high level of industrial structure but an insignificant effect on those with a low level of industrial structure; it also significantly promotes ecological resilience in both high-openness and low-openness cities, with a more prominent effect in low-openness cities. The results provide theoretical and empirical support for enhancing the energy-consuming right trading system and improving the execution of market-oriented environmental policies. At the same time, it gives clear instructions on how to make cities more ecologically resilient.