The Impact of Pilot Policies for New Energy Vehicles on Pollutant Emissions in Prefecture-level Cities

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the "Dual Carbon" goals, transportation electrification serves as a critical low-carbon technical pathway to optimize urban energy structures and cut mobile-source air pollution. To quantitatively assess the environmental techno-economic performance of new energy vehicle (NEV) pilot promotion policies, this paper adopts panel data of 282 prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2014 to 2024, and conducts empirical estimation via the PSM-DID model, transmission pathway test, and multi-dimensional heterogeneity grouping. The results indicate that NEV pilot policies can significantly reduce urban PM₂.₅ and NOₓ emission levels, and the net policy effect remains robust after parallel trend and placebo tests. NEV ownership acts as the core transmission carrier of emission reduction dividends, with the substitution of fuel vehicles contributing 48.91% of total emission cuts. The emission reduction performance of the policies presents prominent differentiation across spatial location, city scale and industrial structure, where megacities, eastern cities and service-dominated cities achieve better low-carbon technology penetration effects. Such disparities stem from unbalanced local supporting policies, charging infrastructure and industrial market foundations. From a techno-economic optimization perspective, differentiated promotion schemes are proposed to provide quantitative support for local governments to formulate targeted NEV support policies and advance collaborative pollution reduction in the transportation sector. Keywords: New energy vehicles, Pilot policy, Pollutant emission reduction, PSM-DID, Low-carbon techno-economy, Prefecture-level panel.