Does smart transportation matter in inhibiting carbon inequality?

The phenomenon of carbon inequality may endanger equal and sustainable social development, which deserves our full attention. This study empirically investigates whether and how smart transportation affect carbon inequality based on a balanced penal dataset of China's 30 provinces from 2002 to 2017. We first examine the impact of smart transportation on carbon inequality using the system-generalized method of moments, and then explore their heterogeneous nexus. We also investigate the direct and indirect impacts of smart transition on carbon inequality. The main findings show that: (1) The development of smart transportation effectively mitigates carbon inequality; an increase in smart transportation by 1% can trigger a decrease in carbon inequality by 0.0119%. (2) Smart transportation has a greater inhibitory effect on carbon inequality in provinces where there are comparatively lower levels of industrial structure and residential consumption. (3) The influence of transportation technology on carbon inequality outweighs that of other sub-indicators of smart transportation; nonetheless, the transportation infrastructure aggregates carbon inequality. (4) The channels through which smart transportation works on carbon inequality include energy consumption and carbon emissions efficiency. We put forward practical policy implications for the eradication of carbon inequality and the development of smart transportation.