Can Smart City Policy Facilitate Green Technology Innovation? Micro-Evidence from Chinese Listed Enterprises Based on Address-Level Identification

Smart city initiatives constitute a pivotal strategy for advancing sustainable urban development, yet their effectiveness in fostering enterprise-level green technology innovation (EGTI) remains underexplored. By leveraging a refined identification strategy at the address level, this study evaluates the impact of China’s Smart City Pilot Policy (SCPP) using a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) approach applied to the panel data of Chinese listed firms from 2000 to 2019. This analysis provides robust causal evidence of the effectiveness of the SCPP in driving green innovation at the firm level. The main findings are as follows: 1) the SCPP significantly increases both enterprise green patents (GPN) and green invention patents (GIN), exhibiting a lagged but progressively increasing pattern over time. A series of robustness tests confirms the validity of these findings across multiple model specifications. 2) Innovation subsidies and regional technological diversification emerge as key policy-induced mechanisms, demonstrating the complementary roles of an ‘effective government’ and an ‘efficient market’. 3) The policy impact is notably stronger in the initial batch of pilot implications and is more pronounced at the county-level administrative units, displaying a regional gradient that diminishes from eastern to central and western regions, with minimal effectiveness observed in northeastern China. These findings provide conceptual insights and empirical support for the development of smart cities and green transition policies, particularly in the context of transitional economies seeking to align environmental goals with innovation-driven growth.