The Synergistic Pollution and Carbon Reduction Effects of Spatial Correlation Networks of New Quality Productive Forces: Evidence from the Yellow River Basin

As the Yellow River Basin (YRB) cultivates new quality productive forces (NQPFs), it faces the urgent task of coordinating pollution reduction and carbon reduction. Using balanced panel data for 68 prefecture-level cities in the YRB from 2012 to 2024, this study combines social network analysis with two-way fixed-effects and mechanism models to examine how the spatial correlation network of NQPFs affects pollution and carbon reduction, that is, pollution emission intensity (P), carbon emission intensity (C) and the synergistic level of pollution and carbon reduction (PCS). The results show that: (1) the network exhibits a gradient pattern of “high in the east and low in the west” and a “core–periphery” structure, in which regional central cities such as Xi’an, Zhengzhou, Jiaozuo, and Luoyang serve as pivotal hubs; (2) network centrality significantly reduces pollution and carbon emission intensity and raises the synergistic level, and this finding remains robust to alternative and lagged explanatory variables, winsorization, sample exclusion, and two-stage least squares estimation; (3) industrial structure upgrading and lower energy consumption intensity are the two main channels; and (4) the effect is significantly stronger in non-resource-based cities and in the upper reaches. These findings provide empirical support for building a differentiated, network-based policy framework for the coordinated reduction of pollution and carbon emissions in the basin.