Spatiotemporal dynamics of low-carbon technology collaboration networks and regional public health governance implications: evidence from China's Yangtze River Delta.

Climate change and carbon-intensive development models pose potential long-term risks to public health by exacerbating exposure to air pollution. Promoting low-carbon technological innovation through regional collaboration has become one of the critical pathways to mitigate environmental health risks and to improve public health governance. Based on enterprise low-carbon patent data in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) from 2014 to 2023, this study integrates spatial statistical analysis, social network analysis, and geographic detector methods to systematically investigate the spatiotemporal evolution, structural characteristics, and driving factors of low-carbon technology collaborative innovation networks. The results show that: (1) The number of low-carbon innovation enterprises in the YRD has grown substantially, with obvious spatial agglomeration. The collaborative innovation network continues to expand, while regional development disparities are widening; (2) Core cities, including Shanghai, Ningbo, Hangzhou, and Nanjing, consistently maintain central positions within the network, serving as critical hubs for low-carbon technology diffusion and regional carbon governance. Meanwhile, cities such as Hefei and Suzhou have achieved a significant increase in network centrality. (3) Economic scale, financial support, technological innovation capacity, and policy investment are the core driving factors shaping network structure and evolutionary patterns, which collectively shape urban carbon emission reduction performance and environmental health improvement. The findings provide empirical evidence to strengthen innovation-driven carbon governance and promote more equitable and resilient regional health systems under the low-carbon transition.