Do biased technological advances affect carbon productivity of service sector: Evidence from China

Zhenqiu Wu; Wenying Huang; Yujin Ge; Yue Dai; Fei Zu

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18071

Do biased technological advances affect carbon productivity of service sector: Evidence from China

Heliyon. 2023 Jul 6;9(7):e18071. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18071. eCollection 2023 Jul.

Authors

Zhenqiu Wu¹, Wenying Huang¹, Yujin Ge¹, Yue Dai¹, Fei Zu¹

Affiliation

¹ Economics and Trade Department, School of Business Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, No. 182, Nanhu Avenue, Donghu New Technology Development Zone, Wuhan, Hubei Province 430073, China.

Abstract

Increasing carbon productivity is regarded as one of the significant ways to strike a balance between national economic growth and environmental protection. As the proportion of China's service sector in the national economy rises and the severity of environmental pollution increases, the matter of carbon productivity in service sector required to be explored in depth. This paper focuses on the biased technological advances index of China's service sector and its impact on carbon productivity by constructing a two-layer nested CES production function, proposing policy countermeasures to raise service sector's carbon productivity in China, which is of great practical significance in reducing carbon emissions of China's service sector, improve carbon productivity of China's service sector and promote the green transformation and sustainable development of China's service sector. The results are as follows. (1) The average value of the biased technological advances index of services in China is negative, indicating that technological advances of services in China are biased towards non-energy elements. The biased technological advances indexes of China's service sector in the western, middle and eastern regions are also negative, and the index of the eastern region is the smallest, indicating that the technological advances of the service sector in the eastern region are biased towards non-energy elements to the highest extent. (2) There is a negative correlation between the biased technological advances index and carbon productivity of services in China. In the western, middle and eastern regions of China, the bias of technological advances in eastern China has the greatest effect on China's productivity of carbon in service sector. The policy implication is that in order to increase China's services' productivity of carbon, it is essential to reduce the biased technological advances index of China's service sector.

Keywords: Biased technological advances; Biased technological advances index; Carbon productivity; China’s service sector.