Green innovation has become an important support to promote the strategic goals of peak carbon dioxide emission and high-quality economic development. This paper systematically examines whether internal control can effectively drive enterprise green innovation and achieve the “win–win” result of enterprise economic development and environmental protection. We found that internal control can significantly improve the green innovation level of enterprises, which is mainly reflected in the mandatory disclosure stage of internal control information and the other four elements of internal control, except the control environment. The mechanism test found that internal control can promote green innovation by reducing enterprise risks, alleviating agency conflicts, relieving financing constraints, and improving the rationality of innovation investment. The heterogeneity test found that the promotion effect of internal control on green innovation is more significant in large enterprises and private enterprises; internal control can effectively supervise the maintenance of relationship resources, and relationship resources positively regulate the promotion effect of internal control on green innovation; excessive executive power will weaken the internal control supervision and punishment of executives, and weaken the positive effect between internal control and green innovation; internal control can improve the utilization rate of government subsidies, and government subsidies positively regulate the positive effect of internal control on green innovation. The research conclusions enrich the market-oriented research on the driving factors of enterprise green innovation, and provide empirical evidence for enhancing the competitiveness of enterprise green innovation and achieving carbon neutrality.

Officially launched in 2008, China’s low-carbon city pilot project is aimed at creating green and low-carbon cities by restricting individual consumption and enterprise production behaviors as a means of controlling greenhouse gas emissions. Among other indicators, the impact of the pilot low-carbon initiative may be evaluated based on whether it induces enterprises to engage in green technology innovation. Using green patent application data from Chinese listed companies between 2009 and 2018, this paper applies a time-varying difference-in-difference (DID) model to conduct a multi-dimensional empirical test on the changes in listed companies’ degrees of green innovation before and after the publication of the list of three batches of pilot cities. Our findings were as follows: first, as a means of environmental regulation, the pilot low-carbon city initiative’s effect on enterprises’ green technology innovation conforms to the Porter hypothesis—that is, it encourages enterprises to improve their production technology and enhances the green innovation levels of listed companies in pilot cities; second, in terms of regional differences, the low-carbon cities pilot initiative can significantly induce green innovation activities among enterprises in China’s eastern region, but not in the central or western regions; third, from the perspective of enterprise ownership, the initiative promotes greater awareness of green innovation among non-state-owned enterprises than among state-owned enterprises. At the enterprise level, this paper provides theoretical support and empirical evidence for the success of the low-carbon city pilot initiative and highlights the implications for nationwide policy.

Low-carbon tourism reflects the degree of environmental concern in the tourism industry and is also the foundation of green, sustainable, and ecological tourism. The transformation of the tourism industry, known as the sunrise industry, to a low-carbon pattern contributes to the sustainable development of tourism cities. In this study, an objective evaluation indicator system for low-carbon tourism cities is constructed from the three dimensions of economy, environment, and society, followed by the determination of the weights of the evaluation indicators using an analytic network process model. Ten low-carbon pilot cities in China are evaluated using statistical data of 2014 and 2019. The main research results show that when a city’s economy has reached a certain level, with the development of the economy and individuals’ income and the gradual reduction in environmental pollution, the city’s development level of low-carbon tourism will also be better. Moreover, although these ten low-carbon pilot cities have similar development levels in terms of their social dimension, they have differed greatly in their economic and environmental dimensions. The tourism cities with better economic development levels also rank higher in terms of low-carbon environment and ecological environment, and the overall development level of low-carbon tourism is also better, which shows the obvious Matthew effect as a whole. This study contributes a set of objective evaluation index systems in line with the connotation of low-carbon tourism and assesses the dynamic difference between the cities. This study provides targeted policy recommendations for the construction of low-carbon tourism cities in China.

This study investigates the impact of the digital economy on energy efficiency through a combination of theoretical analysis and empirical testing. The research contributes by categorizing the energy value creation process into two stages: the energy input stage and the energy operation stage and by examining both the direct and indirect effects of the digital economy on energy efficiency. Indirect effects are explored through factors such as industrial structure, green innovation, transaction efficiency, and environmental regulation. Using panel data from 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta region of China, covering the period from 2006 to 2020, the study empirically examines the effects of the digital economy on energy efficiency. The findings emphasize the significant role of the digital economy in enhancing energy efficiency, particularly through upgrading industrial structures, increasing transaction efficiency, and stimulating green innovation. A heterogeneity analysis reveals that the influence of the digital economy on energy efficiency is less pronounced in resource-based cities than in non-resource-based cities. Based on these findings, the study provides targeted policy recommendations to further leverage the digital economy for improving energy efficiency.