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| Empowerment of Digital Economy to Low-Carbon Development: Mechanism Identification and Spatial Spillover |
| Chang Haoliang1,Xia Feilong2 |
| (1.School of Applied Economics, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 102488, China;2.School of Economics Management, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming 650500, China) |
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Abstract In order to address global issues such as air pollution and climate change, China has committed to adopting more effective policies and measures, striving to achieve carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, and has made a series of deployments. Different from developed countries that have completed industrialization, China is still in the stage of in-depth industrialization and urbanization, and there is great inertia of the path of high carbon dependence formed by rapid economic growth since the reform and opening up. The transition period from carbon peak to carbon neutrality in China is only 30 years. Therefore, the challenges to achieve the ‘double carbon' goal cannot be ignored. At the same time, the digital economy is accelerating its integration into the whole process of economic and social development, and has gradually become a breakthrough to cope with climate change and solve the contradiction between economic growth and environmental constraints. As a strategic choice for a new round of scientific and technological transformation, the digital economy relies on big data, artificial intelligence and other digital technologies to provide a new path for industrial green transformation and carbon emission management, and it plays an important role in energy conservation and emission reduction. However, behind the vigorous development of the digital economy, the carbon emissions caused by energy consumption cannot be ignored. The existing research shows that the digital economy has a more complex impact on carbon emissions. On the one hand, the development of the digital economy promotes energy demand and increases carbon emissions; on the other hand, the integration of the digital economy and the real economy will bring about changes in production, living and governance methods to reduce carbon emissions. In this context, it is extremely important to systematically study the relationship between digital economy and green low-carbon development.#br#This paper sets five indicators to measure the digital economy development level index more comprehensively from three aspects of information industry development, digital infrastructure and digital inclusive finance. Drawing on the panel data of cities at prefecture level and above in China, this paper systematically analyzes the effects, mechanisms, heterogeneity and spatial spillovers of digital economy on carbon emissions. According to the data of 271 cities at or above prefecture level in China from 2011 to 2019, the empirical research results show that from the overall level the digital economy is conducive to low-carbon development, and this conclusion is still valid under various robustness tests such as the 'Smart City' pilot as a quasi-natural experiment. The heterogeneity analysis shows that there are significant regional differences in the impact of digital economy on carbon emissions. In regions with better economic base conditions measured by per capita GDP and regions with higher environmental regulation intensity, the digital economy has a better emission reduction effect. The mediation effect test shows that the impact of the digital economy on carbon emissions is mainly achieved through the improvement of energy utilization efficiency and industrial structure upgrading. At this stage, China's intelligent industry transformation and technological progress mechanisms are not established. Finally, according to the spatial dependence of carbon emissions in various regions of China, the impact of digital economy on carbon emissions has a significant spatial spillover effect. This means that the digital economy can not only reduce the local carbon emission level, but also reduce the carbon emission level of neighboring areas.#br# The marginal contributions of this paper lie in four aspects. First, it analyzes the impact of China's digital economy on low-carbon development from a more comprehensive perspective. Second, this paper analyzes the heterogeneous impact of the digital economy on carbon emissions from economic development and the intensity of environmental regulation. Third, this paper further refines the impact mechanism of digital economy on low-carbon development from energy efficiency improvement, smart industry transformation, technological progress and industrial structure upgrading. Fourth, considering the spatial characteristics of digital economy and the spatial dependence of regional carbon emissions, this paper further studies the spatial spillover effect of digital economy on carbon emissions. This provides empirical support for enabling low-carbon development of the digital economy.#br#
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Received: 15 September 2022
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