Public Interest Litigation and Carbon Emission Intensity: Evidence from the Judgment Documents

Against the backdrop of global climate judicial governance and human rights protection, public interest litigation, as an important judicial system for supervising government carbon reduction duties and regulating enterprise carbon emissions, deserves in-depth investigation. Based on panel data from 30 Chinese provinces over 2013–2021 and 14,073 public interest litigation judgment documents, the research adopts an ESG perspective and treats public interest litigation as a judicial form of environmental governance. Using a fixed-effects model, the research examines the association between public interest litigation and carbon emission intensity. The results show a significant negative association between public interest litigation and carbon emission intensity, which remains robust after instrumental variable regression and the exclusion of municipality samples. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the negative association is relatively weaker for civil public interest litigation than for administrative and civil public interest litigation attached to criminal proceedings. Moderation analysis reveals that government duty fulfillment and enterprise green innovation positively moderate the negative association, while the moderating effect of public judicial attention is not statistically significant. Based on this, the research suggests maintaining judicial modesty while supervising government duties, strengthening the principal role of enterprises in carbon reduction, and improving institutional channels for public participation in judicial governance. The research provides empirical evidence on the association between public interest litigation and carbon emissions, contributing to the international academic discussion on judicial governance and low-carbon transition.