Green energy efficiency improvement under the interaction between innovation and agglomeration of producer services in China

Improving the utilization efficiency of green energy is crucial for China to achieve sustainable development through energy conservation and emission reduction. This paper analyses the impact of innovation and productive service industry agglomeration on green energy efficiency, particularly their moderating effects. The analysis is based on panel data from 273 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2004 to 2017. In this paper, the non-linear model is used for empirical analysis, and the following three results are obtained. First, the impact of the agglomeration of producer services on green energy efficiency is at the rising stage of the inverted u-shaped curve, which promotes the improvement of green energy efficiency. Second, the positive moderating effect of innovation and specialized agglomeration on green energy efficiency is significant, while the moderating effect of diversified agglomeration and innovation is not significant. Third, the moderating effects differ among cities in different regions, of different scales, and at different levels of agglomeration. Specifically, the moderating effect of specialization is significant in central and eastern regions and medium and small cities.