Fiscal Expenditure on Sports and Regional Carbon Emissions: Evidence from China

Due to the problems of economic structure and the ways of industrial development, many countries have accumulated many ecological problems in the process of economic development, especially the increase in carbon emissions, the greenhouse effect, and the emergence of a series of problems, which makes the global ecosystem suffer severe challenges. Achieving green sustainable development has become a strategic development arrangement for all countries, and as the sports economy is closely linked to regional green development, it has become an important channel to influence regional green development by promoting sports development. Based on theoretical analysis, this paper empirically analyzes and tests the impact of government fiscal support for sports on regional carbon emissions and its mechanisms based on provincial panel data using baseline regressions, a mediated effects model, and a threshold model. We argue that the development of green and healthy sports can have a significant impact on regional green development and that government fiscal support for sports plays an important role in this process. We found that government fiscal support for sports can significantly reduce regional carbon emissions and thus promote regional green development. From the perspective of mechanism analysis, the government’s fiscal support for sports leads to the orderly development of the sports industry and its associated industries, which improves the rationalization of the regional industrial structure and thus reduces regional carbon emissions. Moreover, as the carbon productivity of the region continues to rise, the impact of fiscal support for sports on regional low-carbon development gradually deepens. This paper confirms the important role of the government’s emphasis on sports development in the process of achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, verifies the mediating effect of industrial structure rationalization, and further quantifies the correlation through the threshold effect, extending the study of the influencing factors affecting regional carbon emissions.