This article studies the influence of the Carbon Trading Pilot Policy (CTPP) on carbon emissions by constructing the balanced panel data from 2003 to 2020 for 285 cities in China above the prefecture level. Difference-in-Difference (DID) method is used to test the influence and the mechanism. (1) The findings suggested that CTPP has dramatically reduced China’s carbon emissions by 6.21%. The parallel trend test shows that the premise of DID is reliable. (2) A variety of robustness tests, such as the instrumental variable method for endogeneity, Propensity Score Matching (PSM) for sample selection bias, variable substitution, time–bandwidth change, and exclusion of policy intervention, show that the conclusion is still robust. (3) The mediation mechanism test indicates that CTPP can promote the reduction in carbon emissions by promoting Green Consumption Transformation (GCT), improving Ecological Efficiency (EE), and promoting Industrial Structure Upgrading (ISU). GCT contributes the most, followed by EE and ISU. (4) The analysis of the heterogeneity reveals that CTPP has a greater effect on carbon emission reduction in central and peripheral cities in China. This study provides policy implications for China and similar developing countries in the face of carbon reduction.

With the accelerating process of global urbanization, environmental protection has become a hot issue for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers, with such questions as how to make urban transportation markedly sustainable to meet the pace of sustainable economic and social growth. This study visualizes and quantifies the extant publications on urban sustainable transportation research on Web of Science using CiteSpace for a wide range of research topics, including the intellectual structure, development, and evolution of urban sustainable transportation. First, this study presents the characteristics of a number of published papers in relevant fields and time stages, including publication in journals, co-occurrence of keywords, co-occurrence of disciplines and fields, and co-occurrence of the literature through network analysis. This study identifies the basic research contents and high-frequency knowledge contents of urban sustainable transportation. Second, this research analyzes the authors’ cooperation, national cooperation, and research institute cooperation networks. This study identifies the most influential authors, research institutions, and countries. Lastly, this study identifies the research frontiers and trend themes from 1991 to 30 September 2022 through co-citation clustering and research on burst detection, a combination of bibliometric methods, and a systematic review. Accordingly, this study demonstrates the research progress in this field from the perspectives of multiple themes, such as land development and utilization, sustainable transportation systems, low-carbon paths, public transport, electric vehicles, sharing modes, traveler behavior, and smart cities. These aspects provide readers with a preliminary understanding of the development of urban sustainable transportation, indicating that multidisciplinary, multiprofessional, and multiangle cooperation and analysis will become the dominant trend in this field.

Upward comparisons are prevalent in life and have a significant influence on consumer psychology and subsequent behavior. Previous research examined the effects of upward comparisons on consumption behavior, mainly focusing on behavior that evokes positive emotions (e.g., donation behavior, sustainable consumption) or behavior that evokes negative emotions (e.g., impulsive consumption, compulsive consumption) and less on behavior that evokes both negative emotions and positive emotions (i.e., counterhedonic consumption). This research examined the effect of upward comparisons on counterhedonic consumption. Five studies (N = 1111) demonstrated that upward comparison (vs. non-upward comparison) leads to counterhedonic consumption, and this effect is mediated by relative deprivation (Studies 2 and 3). In addition, this research showed that the comparison targets moderate the effects of upward comparisons on counterhedonic consumption. Specifically, when the comparison target is a friend, an upward comparison (vs. non-upward comparison) leads to counterhedonic consumption. When the comparison target is a stranger, an upward comparison (vs. non-upward comparison) has no significant influence on counterhedonic consumption (Study 5). Our findings extend the research on upward comparisons, relative deprivation, and counterhedonic consumption.

To explore how firms’ network connections improve product innovative performance (PIP) for sustainable development, this study takes 230 firms involved in product innovation as the research object, and uses the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method to explore how strong ties, bridging ties, technology exchange, technology transfer, and innovation resource interaction can stimulate product innovative performance. This study has found that firms have three configurations to achieve high product innovative performance and two configurations to achieve non-high product innovative performance. Only appropriately matched types of strong ties, bridging ties, technological exchange, technological transfer, and innovation resource interaction can promote product innovative performance. The findings enrich the theoretical understanding of the relationships among network connections, knowledge flow, innovation resource interaction, and product innovative performance.