Building Resilient Supply Chains: Evidence from Climate-Adaptive City Construction in China

Supply chain resilience (SCR) is the core support for building a modernized industrial system and guaranteeing industrial security. In this paper, we aim to evaluate the impact of the Climate-Adaptive City Construction (CACC) pilot policy on SCR and to investigate its underlying mechanisms using a quasi-natural experiment based on the 2017 pilot initiative. We employ the difference-in-differences (DID) model on the panel data of 249 prefectural-level cities in China from 2006 to 2023. The results show that CACC significantly improves SCR, and this effect is stronger on the southeastern side of the Hu Huanyong line, as well as in non-resource cities and non-“two-control” cities. The mechanism analysis reveals that CACC enhances the resilience of the urban industrial chain by fostering environmental awareness, increasing the level of green technology innovation, and reducing the extent of urban sprawl. In addition, the positive spatial spillover effect of the pilot policy on SCR is further verified using the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM). The results presented in this paper serve as a reference for the continued promotion of CACC and offer policy optimization recommendations.