The Heterogeneous Relationship Between China’s Low-Carbon Economic Scale and Quality: A County-Level Analysis from the Perspective of Administrative Division

Under China’s ambitious “Dual Carbon” strategy, understanding the relation hip between the scale and quality of the low-carbon economy at the county level is crucial for providing robust empirical evidence to guide policymakers. This study employs panel vector autoregression, panel fixed-effects regression, and panel multinomial logit regression to explore the heterogeneous relationship between scale and quality across counties and municipal districts, as well as to investigate the underlying mechanisms. The findings reveal that (1) county-level quality growth has a statistically significant positive effect on scale growth, indicating that China’s current low-carbon development strategy, with its emphasis on quality improvement, is well-timed; (2) although scale growth negatively impacts quality growth at the county level, this effect is not significant in municipal districts; (3) the development of the secondary industry, large-scale industrial output intensity, and resource-based development contribute to the heterogeneous relationship between scale and quality; and (4) emission reduction technology and local government intervention significantly enhance quality in municipal districts more than in counties, primarily by influencing the degree of decoupling.