Firm ownerships matter in measuring carbon footprints and its driving forces in China's domestic value chains

Some research has studied the carbon footprints of the multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the global value chains (GVCs). However, currently there are few studies have studied the carbon footprints of the foreign invested firms (FIFs) distributed in different provinces in China's domestic value chains (DVCs). This paper has used China's inter-provincial input-output table distinguishing domestically owned enterprises (DEs), Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan (HMTs) invested enterprises and other foreign invested enterprises (FIEs) to study the carbon footprints of the FIFs in China's DVCs and further analyzed the driving factors of the carbon footprints change. The results show that: (1) In 2017, more than two-thirds of the carbon footprints came from FIEs and this proportion had decreased 5.6% compared with 2012. The FIFs located in coastal provinces or economically developed areas basically have the largest carbon footprints. (2) The production activity of the FIFs located in some developed provinces has mostly driven the carbon emissions of other provinces that have direct or indirect trade with them. While in some less affluent energy provinces, it has mainly driven the carbon emissions of the local DEs. (3) The biggest driving factor for reducing the carbon footprints of the FIFs is the carbon emissions intensity of the DEs, followed by the input-output relationship between DEs and FIFs. The final product production of the HMTs is the largest driving factor that promoting the increase of the FIFs' carbon footprints, followed by the final product production of the FIEs. However, different driving factors have different contributions in different provinces. The research results of this article have important research significance for reasonably introducing foreign investment and promoting the reduction of the FIFs' carbon footprints in various provinces in China.