Impact of green fiscal policy on urban ecological resilience—evidence from China’s “comprehensive demonstration cities for energy conservation and emission reduction fiscal policy”

Against the backdrop of ongoing global ecological degradation and rapid urbanization, ecological resilience has become a critical pillar of China’s resilient city development approach. This study takes China’s comprehensive demonstration program for fiscal policies on emission reduction and energy conservation as a proxy for green fiscal policy (GFP). Using panel data collected from 2007 to 2023 from 238 cities, we construct a multi-period DID model to evaluate its influence on urban ecological resilience (UER). The results suggest that GFP significantly enhances UER, and this finding remains robust after several robustness tests. Furthermore, mechanism analyses further show that GFP strengthens UER through two main channels: promoting the optimization of industrial structure and improving the energy structure. Moreover, government environmental regulation amplifies the positive effect of GFP on UER. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that the policy impact is particularly in regenerative resource-based cities, large cities, and cities with greater potential for energy conservation. Overall, this study provides valuable empirical evidence for advancing China’s resilient city construction and offers important policy insights for promoting the advancement of a “Beautiful China” and achieving the “dual carbon” goals.