Has the Development of the Digital Economy Improved the Green Ecological Efficiency of Cities—Empirical Evidence based on Data from 269 Prefecture-level Cities
The report of the 20th CPC National Congress pointed out that adhering to the concept of green development and improving green ecological benefits are the core of promoting high-quality economic growth.Based on the panel data of Chinese cities from 2011 to 2021,the super-efficiency SBM model is used to calculate the green ecological efficiency of Chinese cities,the impact and mechanism of the development of digital economy on urban green ecological efficiency are empirically tested,and the results show that:firstly,the development of the digital economy has a significant effect on the improvement of green ecological efficiency,and the results are still remarkable even after various robustness tests such as quantile regression and instrumental variable method;secondly,the mechanism test shows that the digital economy mainly improves the green ecological efficiency of cities by promoting technological innovation and the upgrading of industrial structure;thirdly,heterogeneity analysis reveals that the impact of digital economy on green ecological efficiency is more significant in the eastern and central regions with richer resource endowments,as well as in megacities and big cities,especially those with higher Internet penetration rate and human capital level.For this reason,the government should actively promote the development of the digital economy,deepen the application of digital technology,increase investment in innovation,improve innovation efficiency,overcome obstacles to industrial structure upgrading,so as to steadily promote the construction of urban ecological civilization,and achieve coordinated development of economy and environment.
digital economygreen ecological efficiencytechnology innovationindustrial structure upgrading
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