How Can Climate-Resilient City Construction Drive Green Sustainable Innovation? Evidence from 260 Chinese Cities

Building climate-resilient cities strengthens urban livability and sustainable development levels. This paper constructs a difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of the pilot policy for climate-resilient city construction (CRCC—CRCC is used uniformly in the following text to represent the policy) on green sustainable innovation, using panel data of 260 prefecture-level Chinese cities from 2009 to 2023. The results reveal that CRCC can significantly promote green sustainable innovation in Chinese cities. Additionally, CRCC promotes green sustainable innovation by increasing the level of informatization, improving green total-factor energy efficiency, boosting corporate ESG performance, and alleviating corporate financing constraints. Therefore, it is necessary to further strengthen the implementation and promotion of China’s climate pilot policy. Attention should be paid to optimizing the pathways through which the pilot policy affects green sustainable innovation. Differentiated regional policies should be implemented based on local conditions. A tripartite linkage mechanism involving the government, enterprises, and the public should be established to increase societal awareness and support for climate-resilient city construction.