How can climate adaptation policy enhance urban climate resilience? Empirical evidence from China

5. Discussion and conclusions This paper focuses on China’s Climate-Adaptive City Construction Pilot Program (CACCP), utilizing panel data from 57 cities in the Yellow River Basin—a region characterized by ecological fragility—from 2010 to 2022. It employs Synthetic DID, stepwise regression, Sobel tests, and triple difference methods to empirically analyze the impact of the CACCP policy on urban climate resilience and its underlying mechanisms. The main research conclusions are: (1) Urban climate resilience is defined as a city’s comprehensive ability to adapt to long-term climate change trends, including stability, coor- dination, and transformation capabilities. Based on this, the study constructed an urban climate resilience assessment indicator system comprising 26 indicators. (2) Empirical results indicate that the CACCP policy significantly enhances urban climate resilience. This conclusion remains valid after a series of robustness tests. (3) Mechanism tests reveal that green bonds significantly mediate the CACCP policy’s enhancement of urban climate resilience; urban education and Table 7. Endogeneity test results. Variable treated GB GB Resilience L5_ERD -0.1755** (0.0782) treated 0.8003** (0.4038) L10_Pollution 0.2106** (0.0908) GB 0.2717** (0.1299) Constant 0.2382** (0.0946) −0.1465 (0.1209) −0.0057 (0.0485) 0.0612*** (0.0144) Controls YES YES YES YES City FE YES YES YES YES Year FE YES YES YES YES N 741 741 741 741 First-stage F-statistic 10.09*** 16.14*** Hausman 33.37*** 106.69*** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0335736.t007

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0335736 November 6, 2025 17 / 21 public environmental concern positively moderate the policy’s implementation effects, while mineral resource dependency exerts an adverse moderating effect. The main similarities between this study’s findings and the latest research literature on climate adaptation are as follows: First, this study empirically confirms that the CACCP policy can significantly enhance urban climate resilience, consistent with the findings of Friesenecker et al. (2025) and Luo et al. (2025), which point to the positive impact of cli- mate adaptation policies [66,67]. Second, this study’s definition of urban climate resilience aligns with the emphasis on the systemic and dynamic nature of climate resilience highlighted in the literature by Zorita et al. (2025) and Reckien et al. (2025), breaking away from a single-dimensional perspective [73,74]. Third, this study identified the mediating mechanism of green bonds, which, together with the research of Pitzén et al. (2025) and Osei et al. (2025), jointly emphasized the key role of financial instruments in climate adaptation [67,69,70]. This study’s main differences and innovations compared to existing literature are as follows: First, existing literature mainly focuses on climate adaptation policies in countries such as the European Union, the United States, and Australia [69,73,75,76]. This study focuses on ecologically fragile regions in China (the Yellow River Basin). It systematically examines the effects of China’s CACCP policy on enhancing urban

climate resilience, providing valuable insights for developing countries. Second, this paper reveals the role of green bonds as a channel for implementing climate adaptation policies, providing insights into the institutional black box of EU financial integration [69] and private sector incentive mechanisms [70]. Third, the study finds that education and public environmen- tal concerns can optimize policy effectiveness. At the same time, mineral resource dependence (the resource curse) has an inhibitory effect, providing quantitative evidence to complement research on equitable resilience [71] and racial vulner- ability [72]. To further optimize the effectiveness of the CACCP policy, this paper proposes the following recommendations: First, innovate climate investment portfolios and strengthen the role of financial instruments. The government should promote the innovation of diversified climate finance tools such as climate bonds, climate credits, climate funds, and climate risk insurance to meet the financial needs of short-, medium-, and long-term climate adaptation construction projects. Second, increase investment in education and enhance educational equity. Continue to increase financial allocations to educa- tion, ensuring that the growth rate of education funding exceeds that of regular fiscal revenue; implement scholarship and grant systems to promote educational equity; incorporate courses on the relationship between humans and nature into education systems at all levels. Third, media publicity, community activities, and information disclosure should be

utilized to raise public awareness of environmental issues. Use television, radio, newspapers, and social media platforms Fig 8. Parallel trend test results for DID method. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0335736.g008

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0335736 November 6, 2025 18 / 21 to disseminate environmental protection information; regularly organize activities such as Cleanup Day and Arbor Day to encourage residents to participate in practical actions to improve the environment; formulate uniform information disclosure standards, expand the scope of environmental information disclosure, increase the frequency of disclosure, and promote the construction of digital platforms. Fourth, actively promote green energy transition and reduce the city’s dependence on mineral resources. Establish special funds to support the development and utilization of non-fossil energy sources, such as wind and solar power; encourage enterprises to adopt advanced production technologies and equipment to improve energy efficiency; develop a circular economy model and strengthen international cooperation on clean energy technologies. This paper also has some limitations. First, China’s climate change adaptation efforts started relatively late, and its statistical system is not yet fully developed. The design of the indicator system and data collection are also constrained, and further optimization of the indicator system design is needed. Second, while the Synthetic DID method used in this paper’s policy evaluation combines the advantages of the traditional DID and synthetic control methods, it also has methodological limitations, such as reliance on optimization algorithms for weight selection and difficulty handling multiple

interventions. Third, the study focuses on China’s CACCP policy, which has specific regional and institutional limitations. In the future, we will continue to improve the urban climate resilience evaluation system and policy assessment methods. We also plan to expand existing research in the following areas: First, based on the dimension of social equity, we will explore the differentiated effects of CACCP policies in ethnic minority communities and low-income groups; second, we will strengthen cross-country comparisons to analyze the moderating role of institutional environments on policy out- comes; third, we will assess whether the CACCP policy has triggered systemic transformations, such as shifts toward a low-carbon industrial structure. Supporting information S1 File. Data. (XLS) S2 File. Entropy method. (DOCX) Author contributions Conceptualization: Ana Yin. Formal analysis: Ana Yin, Ziqi Liu. Investigation: Ziqi Liu. Resources: Ana Yin. Visualization: Ziqi Liu. Writing – original draft: Ana Yin. Writing – review & editing: Ana Yin. References 1. IPCC. Climate change 2023: synthesis report. Geneva: IPCC. 2023. 2. UNEP. Adaptation gap report 2023. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau. 2023. 3. Schoenefeld JJ, Schulze K, Bruch N. The diffusion of climate change adaptation policy. WIREs Climate Change. 2022;13(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/ wcc.775

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