The Impact of Digital Economy on Green Technology Innovation and Its Mechanism: Evidence from 274 Cities in China

ABSTRACT

The digital economy is gradually emerging as a new driving force and engine for high-quality economic development. In the context of reaching carbon peak and carbon neutrality, can the digital economy empower the development of urban green technology innovation? Based on the panel data of 274 cities in China from 2011 to 2019, this paper measures the development level of digital economy at the city level and employs the two-way fixed effect model to empirically analyze the impact of digital economy on urban green technology innovation. The results indicate that: (1) Digital economy development exert a significant positive impact on urban green technology innovation. This conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests. (2) Digital economy enhances urban green technology innovation by optimizing human capital structure, enhancing the level of financial and credit investment, and strengthening public environmental concern. (3) Heterogeneity analyses show that the digital economy has a greater positive effect on green technology innovation in the eastern region and non-resource cities. The higher the level of intellectual property protection and the better the development of the factor market, and the lower the intensity of environmental regulation, the greater the positive effect of the digital economy on urban green technology innovation. These findings are not only of great practical significance for accelerating the development of green technology innovation in China, but also serve as a reference for other developing countries to utilize the digital economy to empower the development of green technology innovation.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital economy
• green technology innovation
• human capital
• financial credit investment
• public environment concern

JEL:

• C50
• O33
• Q55

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1540496X.2023.2297925

Notes

1. https://idf.pku.edu.cn/.

Additional information

Funding

Feng Guo thanks financial support from the National Social Science Fund of China [23BJY057] and the Chongqing Social Science Planning Talent Program [2022YC016]. Chen Yang, Shiyu Feng gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education of China [22JJD790035].