From Policy Inputs to Urban Heat-Adaptation Delivery: Formative Index Decomposition Reveals a Policy-Stage Mismatch in China's Climate-Adaptive City Pilots
Description
Composite indicators can make early administrative responses look like delivered climate-adaptation capacity. This study evaluates China's 2017 climate-adaptive city pilot program using 299 prefecture-level and higher-level cities from 2010 to 2023. We define the outcome as a six-component formative monitoring index. By formative, we mean that each component captures a distinct policy-relevant dimension; the components are not assumed to reflect one latent construct. This distinction changes what is being estimated and how the result is interpreted. We separate an investment-attention response index from an ecology-health diagnostic. Difference-in-differences estimates show that the investment-attention response index increased by 3.100 points. Infrastructure construction investment and public environmental attention increased by 3.151 and 3.049 points. The six-component index estimate is 0.973, but the ecology-health diagnostic is -0.076 (p = 0.711). Province-by-year fixed effects retain a positive estimate of 0.894 (p = 0.020). Observed-confounder checks point in the same direction, although positive selection on unobserved city readiness could bias the causal magnitude upward. Governance text measures provide no robust mechanism evidence. Heterogeneity tests are underpowered with only 24 treated cities, and spatial tests provide no multiplicity-adjusted evidence of diffusion. The pilot therefore achieved first-stage mobilization of investment and attention, but multidimensional delivery is not yet demonstrated. The path from mobilized inputs to delivered capacity remains incomplete. Formative decomposition reveals this policy-stage mismatch and supports monitoring of budgets, completed projects, operating services, maintenance, and heat-risk outcomes.