Local governments’ incentives and governing practices in low-carbon transition: A comparative study of solar water heater governance in four Chinese cities

Urban sustainability transitions have been increasingly imperative to address global environmental challenges, and local governments are expected to play a critical role. There is a pressing need to explore local governments’ underlying motivations and their impacts on governing practices. Taking China as an example, this paper builds an incentive matrix to distinguish the levels of local governments’ economic interest and environmental interest in specific low-carbon innovations and investigates how different incentive typologies affect their governing practices. By comparing four Chinese municipal governments’ incentives and governing practices in promoting solar water heater adoption, this paper finds that Chinese local governments’ environmental incentive is still not compelling or stable enough, while governments that are motivated by economic interests would resort to more substantial governance practices to promote the low-carbon innovations. These results indicate potential in latecomer cities in developing both economic and environmental incentives towards low-carbon innovations because green activities could also be favored if they are well aligned with local economic development.