China's low-carbon governance at community level: A case study in Min'an community, Beijing

As a basic structural unit of the city, the community plays a crucial role in decreasing carbon emissions and creating a low carbon city. This paper selects a classic and official low carbon community named Min'an Community in Beijing as a case to illustrate the governance mechanism of the low carbon community in China from the perspective of polycentric governance. The paper summarizes the government mechanism, market mechanism, and public participation mechanism in Min'an Community and analyzes the provision, monitoring, and enforcement of each mechanism. We find that unlike the low carbon governance at the city or industry park levels, China's low carbon governance at the community level lacks a dominant mechanism. Even though it involves community-wide governance, the public participation mechanism is also inadequate. For improving low carbon governance at the community level, the government should broaden finance channels to strengthen the incentive mechanisms, make active use of new technologies, such as mobile Internet, encourage innovation of public participation mechanism, and employ various publicity and education measures to cultivate the low carbon culture.