Why does the behavior of local government leaders in low-carbon city pilots influence policy innovation?

Through its low-carbon city pilot program, China aims to combine national targets with local initiatives to advance low-carbon transformation and encourage policy innovations. Based on survey data collected from the low-carbon pilot cities, this paper aims to explore the impacts of the behavior of local government leadership on policy innovations from the three dimensions of leadership position, leadership participation, and leadership attention as well as the heterogeneous impacts of leaders’ behavior on policy innovations at different levels of carbon emissions intensity. This paper used the Heckman selection model to empirically analyze the factors influencing policy innovations. The results show that under circumstances with weak incentives and weak constraints, the behaviors of local leaders in low-carbon pilot cities had a positive impact on policy innovations. Specifically, the local leader at the very top of the hierarchy responsible for the pilot leadership group had a significant impact on policy innovations. Departmental-level cadres who participated exchange seminars, which refer to conducting low-carbon tests, had positive impacts on policy innovations. Nevertheless, if the local government implemented a low-carbon related strategic plan, this also had a positive effect. With the increase in carbon emissions intensity, local leaders faced pressures to reduce carbon emissions, so that the effect of the leaders’ behaviors in promoting policy innovation was greater as well.