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Air pollution is one of the serious environmental problems facing the world. This paper systematically investigates the impact and transmission mechanism of the construction of national eco-industrial parks (NEDPs) on urban air pollution based on Chinese city-level panel data from 2003 to 2021 using a staggered difference-in-differences (staggered DID) model. It is found that the construction of NEDP significantly reduces urban air pollution, a conclusion supported by the negative weight diagnostic test and two types of robust DID estimators. Mechanism analyses indicate that NEDP construction reduces urban air pollution mainly by improving regional environmental regulation, promoting green technology innovation and improving energy structure. In addition, the mitigation effect of NEDP construction on urban air pollution is heterogeneous by policy intensity, city resource endowment, city size and administrative status. Further tests show that the institutional environment enhances the air pollution mitigation effect of NEDP construction and that the better the degree of marketization, property rights system, legal system and market development in the place where the policy is implemented, the more conducive it is to amplify the air pollution suppression effect brought about by NEDP construction. Developing economies should take complete account of the characteristics of different regions when implementing place-based green policies to achieve synergistic development of the environment and the economy., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Haze pollution has been addressed in extensive studies over the last few years. However, the relationship between resource dependence and haze pollution has not been fully investigated. This study focuses on addressing this problem while considering the mediating role of green technology innovation. A panel dataset of 263 prefecture-level cities in China from 2005 to 2018 is used for the analysis. The results show the following: (1) the two-way fixed-effect model reveals that resource dependence contributes significantly to haze pollution, and this finding remains robust across a series of robustness tests. (2) A mediation analysis indicates that resource dependence is unfavorable for green technology innovation, indirectly affecting the alleviation of haze pollution. (3) The results of panel threshold regression suggest that green technology innovation promotes haze reduction in the weak and medium resource dependence stages, whereas this optimization effect disappears in the strong resource dependence stage due to rebound effects. (4) The results of regional heterogeneity demonstrate that the positive effects of resource dependence on haze pollution exist in eastern and western China but not in central China. Based on these results, policy implications are given to reduce haze pollution., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)