Enhancing the performance of corporate green supply chain management (GSCM) represents a critical enabler for delivering on the central imperatives of the global low-carbon transition. Using panel data of Chinese listed companies from 2003 to 2022, this study employs a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) approach to examine the impact of the Low-Carbon City Pilot (LCCP) policy on firms' GSCM performance. The results show that the LCCP policy significantly improves firms' GSCM performance, and this effect remains robust across a range of sensitivity tests. Mechanism analyses reveal that the policy operates primarily by stimulating green innovation and increasing investment in environmental protection equipment. Furthermore, financial constraints play a significant moderating role: the positive effect of the policy on GSCM performance is stronger when firms face fewer financing constraints. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the policy effects are more pronounced among non-heavy-polluting enterprises, those located in resource-dependent cities, and ISO 14001-certified enterprises. This study provides novel micro-level evidence on the environmental governance effects of place-based climate policies, and offers key policy implications for scaling up low-carbon city pilots and promoting corporate supply chain decarbonization.

Comprehensive evaluation and identification of the critical regulatory determinants of carbon emission efficiency (CEE) are very important for China’s low-carbon transition. Accordingly, this paper first employs an undesirable global super-hybrid measure approach to calculate the CEE of China’s iron and steel industry (ISI). We then further use spatial error and threshold regression models to examine the spatial and non-linear effects of heterogeneous environmental regulations on CEE, respectively. Our empirical results show that (1) CEE varies significantly across China’s regions, with the eastern region having the highest CEE score, followed by the western and central regions, with the northeast region ranking the lowest; (2) command-and-control and market-incentive regulations both promote CEE, whereas the public participation approach does not significantly contribute to performance gains; (3) all three types of environmental regulations exhibit a non-linear threshold effect on CEE; (4) openness level, technological progress, and industrial concentration enhance efficiency gains, while urbanization level exerts a negative impact on CEE. Our findings have important implications for the design of environmental regulations.