School of Management, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210003, China.
Business School, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Feb 3;20(3):2733. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20032733.
As a new engine to promote high-quality development and a sustainable economy, the digital economy (DE) plays a key role in achieving carbon reduction targets. In this paper, we use the "broadband China (BC)" policy as a proxy variable for the DE and employ the panel data of Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2019 to investigate the effect of DE development on carbon emission intensity and its mechanism of action. It is found that (1) DE development significantly reduces the carbon emissions of cities and presents dynamic and sustainable characteristics; (2) the results of mechanism tests indicate that DE development is more inclined to reduce carbon emission intensity by improving regional innovation quality than by improving regional innovation quantity; (3) the impact of DE development on carbon emission intensity differs among cities with different characteristic attributes and different environmental regulation intensity, and the emission reduction effect is more obvious in non-resource-based cities, cities with lower environmental regulation intensity, and cities with weaker environmental target constraints; (4) the impact of DE development and innovation-driven development strategies on reducing carbon emission intensity has a policy linkage effect.
作为推动高质量发展和可持续经济的新引擎，数字经济（DE）在实现碳减排目标方面发挥着关键作用。在本文中，我们使用“宽带中国（BC）”政策作为 DE 的代理变量，并利用 2006 年至 2019 年中国地级市的面板数据，研究了 DE 发展对碳排放强度的影响及其作用机制。结果表明：（1）DE 发展显著降低了城市的碳排放，呈现出动态和可持续的特征；（2）机制检验结果表明，DE 发展更倾向于通过提高区域创新质量而非数量来降低碳排放量；（3）DE 发展对碳排放强度的影响在具有不同特征属性和不同环境监管强度的城市之间存在差异，在非资源型城市、环境监管强度较低的城市以及环境目标约束较弱的城市，减排效果更为明显；（4）DE 发展和创新驱动发展战略对降低碳排放强度的影响具有政策联动效应。
