Multifaceted Pathways of Carbon Emission Reduction Policies: A Study Based on the Decoupling Effect and fsQCA Method in the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration

The urban carbon administration discussion is becoming dominant in the carbon emission reduction landscape. China, the world’s paramount carbon emitter, has instituted a series of policies geared towards carbon emissions reduction. The co-dependent nature of these policies becomes paramount in outlining accurate and comprehensive evaluation results. This research scrutinizes the effect of various policy mixtures on curbing urban carbon emissions, utilizing the Tapio decoupling elasticity coefficient and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) techniques. The consistencies surpass the widely accepted theoretical threshold of 0.8, and each configuration can explain 14.3% to 19.8% of the sample. The findings reveal that industrial and energy policies drive the decoupling of urban carbon emissions in three of four configurations. Management-based policies merely play an auxiliary role, while social and economic policies have yet to exhibit significant implications. The outcomes of this research offer a framework for augmenting the carbon emission reduction policy system and fostering the advancement of carbon reduction initiatives.