Study On The Spatial Spillover Effect Of Infrastructure Investment On Regional Carbon Emissions

Climate change has become a huge challenge for mankind,and global warming,mainly caused by carbon dioxide emissions,is a serious threat to people’s survival and development..As the world’s largest carbon emitter,China is currently facing significant pressure on carbon reduction.Infrastructure,as an important guarantee for supporting economic and social development and an important link connecting economic activities between provinces,directly consumes energy and generates carbon emissions during its construction and expansion stages.However,infrastructure investment generates an economic and social agglomeration effect,which can promote structural and technologcal reforms in production and indirectly spill over regional carbon emissions,resulting in regional carbon reduction effects.Therefore,clarifying the spatial spillover effect of infrastructure investment on regional carbon emissions provides a theoretical basis for further formulating relevant policies.In view of this,this article reviews the relevant literature on the impact of infrastructure investment on regional carbon emissions,defines the conceptual scope of infrastructure investment and regional carbon emissions,and combines theoretical foundations such as environmental Kuznets curve,antecedent capital theory,public goods,and spatial effects to construct a STIRPAT theoretical conceptual model of infrastructure investment on regional carbon emissions.From the perspective of industrial transformation The perspective of technological progress summarizes the mechanism by which infrastructure investment affects regional carbon emissions.Secondary,analyze the development status of infrastructure investment and regional carbon emissions from the dual dimensions of time and space.Finally,this article takes the spatial correlation characteristics of regional carbon emissions as the starting point for research,using panel data from 30 provinces in China from 2003 to 2019,combined with exploratory spatial data analysis,spatial econometric models,and mediator effect models.Firstly,select appropriate spatial econometric models to test the impact of infrastructure investment on regional carbon emissions;Second,use the mesomeric effect model to empirically test whether industrial transfor-mation and technological progress can become the role path of infrastructure affecting regional carbon emissions.The empirical tests led to the following conclusions: First,On the basis of considering spatial correlation,the total effect regression coefficient of infrastructure investment on local and neighboring regional carbon emissions is-0.356,indicating that infrastructure investment has a regional carbon reduction effect.From the perspective of structural heterogeneity,economic infrastructure can effectively suppress provincial carbon emissions,but at present,social infrastructure has not yet played a role in suppressing carbon emissions.Secondly,The effect path analysis of infrastructure investment on regional carbon emission.The mechanism test results show that both types of infrastructure can effectively curb provincial carbon emissions by optimizing industrial structure and promoting technological innovation.Among them,the intermediary effect of industrial structure upgrading of economic infrastructure is much greater than that of technological progress;The masking effect of social infrastructure through techmologic-al progress is greater than that of industrial structure upgrading.Therefore,China should strengthen infrastructure investment efforts,formulate regional differentiated investment strategies,optimize infrastructure investment structure,fully stimulate the external environmental effects of infrastructure investment,and fight the battle for regional carbon emissions reduction.