Volume 4,Issue 5
A Study on the Causal Effects and Mechanisms of Climate Policy Uncertainty on Urban Air Quality in China
The superposition of industrialization and urbanization has increased the pressure on China’s carbon emissions and air pollution control. Policy implementation is full of uncertainty due to multiple disturbances. Clarifying how climate policy uncertainty dynamically affects urban air quality is a key gap in assessing the effectiveness of “dual control”. Based on the daily air quality index (AQI) and China Climate Policy Uncertainty Index (CCPU) of 30 key cities from 2013 to 2023, this paper uses a Granger causality test and wavelet coherence analysis to study the dynamic correlation evolution process between CCPU and urban AQI. The results show that: (1) There is a two-way Granger causality between CCPU and AQI in the nonlinear framework, but CCPU has a significant guiding effect on AQI, while AQI has a relatively limited feedback effect on CCPU. (2) The coherence between CCPU and AQI has periodic heterogeneity at different time scales: in the short-period time scale (0-12 months), the coherence between CCPU and AQI is significant and positively correlated; in the medium-period time scale (12-36 months), the coherence of CCPU and AQI is weakened but still positively correlated; in the long-term time scale (36-60 months), CCPU and AQI coherence increased again and turned to be negatively correlated. (3) CCPU always leads or synchronizes with AQI throughout the cycle time scale, indicating that climate policy uncertainty is a forward-looking variable that drives urban air quality changes. This complex time-varying feature and its transmission mechanism can provide a scientific basis for the formulation of differentiated atmospheric governance and climate policies in the cycle.
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