Economic Downturn Pressure, Public Value Conflict and Local Governments' Low-carbon Governance

To reach China's carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals requires that local governments actively and efficiently promote low-carbon governance. However, in recent years, problems such as “increasing, instead of decreasing, energy consumption”, “blindly launching high-energy-consuming and high-emission projects”, and “insufficiently eliminating backward production capacity” have frequently arisen, thereby affecting the low-carbon efforts by local governments. The reason for these issues is that economic downturn pressures have intensified public value conflicts, causing a dilemma for local governments and leading to deviant behavior. Based on panel data from 226 prefectural-level cities in China from 2012 to 2020, this article explores the mechanism by which economic downturn pressures affect the efficiency of low-carbon governance efforts by local governments from the perspective of public value conflicts. Furthermore, the article analyzes the moderating effects of local governments' digital transformation on this mechanism from a dynamic capability perspective. The article comprehensively uses analytical methods and techniques, such as Data Envelopment Analysis, Text Analysis based on Machine Learning, the Entropy Method, the Bootstrap Method, and the Moderated Mediation Effect Model. The research conclusions indicate that: (1) Economic downturn pressures have a significant negative impact on the efficiency of local governments' low-carbon governance efforts. The greater the economic downturn pressures faced by local governments, the lower the efficiency of their low-carbon governance efforts; (2) Public value conflicts are the mediating mechanism by which economic downturn pressures interfere with local governments' low-carbon governance efforts, and they are also the core mechanism transmitting the negative impacts of the economic downturn pressures. Economic downturn pressures intensify the conflicts between two sets of public values: “economic development” and the “ecological environment”. Public value conflicts make low-carbon governance a “serious problem” and induce deviant behavior by local governments, thereby negatively affecting their low-carbon governance efficiency; (3) Digital transformation capabilities can negatively moderate the mediating effects of public value conflicts. When local governments have a higher capability for digital transformation, the mechanism by which economic downturn pressures reduce low-carbon governance efficiency by intensifying public value conflicts is significantly weakened. This article provides a new theoretical perspective for the study of China's carbon peaking and carbon neutrality issues. It not only contributes to an understanding of the painful low-carbon governance problems faced by local governments from the perspective of public value conflicts but also provides theoretical and policy insights into the behavioral patterns of local governments and explores strategies to resolve public value conflicts.