The Effect of Enclave Adjustment on the Urban Energy Intensity in China: Evidence from Wuhan

• Main Authors: Zhi Li, Ruyi Yan, Zuo Zhang, Huaping Sun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-02-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: enclave adjustment; synthetic control method; urban energy intensity; Wuhan
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/1940

Due to the needs of China’s rapid urbanization, enclave adjustments between districts in a city have become a national phenomenon in recent decades. However, it is rarely discussed in the literature whether this adjustment can have an impact on urban energy intensity. Taking Wuhan’s enclave adjustment in 2009 as a sample and a city-level panel dataset during the period of 2005–2014, using the synthetic control method, this paper investigates for the first time the impact of enclave adjustment between districts on the urban energy intensity. The results show that the logarithmic energy intensity paths of real and synthetic Wuhan diverge after 2009, and the enclave adjustment is indeed conducive to reducing energy intensity. Although this policy effect fluctuated slightly in 2013, it remained evident and continued to expand in subsequent years. We also further adopt the permutation test and placebo test to check the robustness of the baseline results, and this policy effect was found to still be statistically significant and persistent over time. We further verified that aligning division management, changing the incentives of local officials, promoting the agglomeration effect, and regional integration after adjustment are potential contributors to reducing urban energy intensity.