Impact of the Design Industry on Carbon Emissions in the Manufacturing Industry in China: A Case Study of Zhejiang Province

Reducing carbon emissions during the manufacturing process is a top priority for realizing the strategic “carbon neutral” target. Currently, there is a great deal of research about carbon production in the middle and later stages of production. However, studies on upstream processes are relatively scarce. Studies concerning the design stages are particularly uncommon, although this phase has a profound effect on carbon emissions during manufacturing. Therefore, it is vital to study this and related fields in depth. In this paper, we take Zhejiang Province, China, as the research object, and study the relationship between the design industry and carbon emissions in the manufacturing industry. Through analysis, we developed a first-level evaluation index for the influence of design on carbon emissions in the production stage. Then, we subdivided the first-level indexes into several second-level indexes using the entropy method. Subsequently, we calculated their weights and comprehensively evaluated the influence of these design factors on carbon emissions in the manufacturing industry using the ridge regression model test. Results from our research reveal that at the design end of the production chain, the expansion of resource scale of each design phase has a significant inhibitory effect on the carbon emissions of the manufacturing stage. Conversely, improvements to the industrial economic benefit index have a significant positive effect on the carbon emissions in the manufacturing industry, while government support and the innovation composite index have little influence. The main conclusions of this study are as follows: To reduce carbon emissions in the manufacturing industry, the scale of the inhibitory effect of the design process should be fully evaluated, while the scale construction and related resource input of the design phase should be emphasized. Furthermore, guidance regarding the social responsibility of design enterprises should be strengthened to further promote the concept of “green design” and reverse the purely market-oriented focus of the industry. Also, to promote a greener design industry, the provision of high-quality green design talents should be fortified. In the future, an appropriate green design evaluation index system should be devised to ensure the stable economic development of the design industry and challenge the current situation where a focus on economic indexes results in increased carbon emissions.