Measurement,Dynamic Evolution,and Convergence Tests of Manufacturing Digital Inequality in China
Digital inequality is a developmental gap formed during the access to and use of digital elements,affect-ing various aspects of social development,industrial upgrading,and individual well-being.Notably,as key players in so-cioeconomic development,manufacturing enterprises rely heavily on digital elements in their production operations,stra-tegic development,and technological innovation.Digital transformation has thus become a development direction for the manufacturing industry,bringing to the forefront the issue of digital inequality.Therefore,based on the measurement of digital access and application inequality in the manufacturing industry,this study holds practical significance for a deeper analysis of China's digital transformation.Based on the above analysis,this paper selects A-share listed companies in China's manufacturing industry from 2010 to 2021 as the research object,utilizes the kernel density estimation method to portray the distributional characteris-tics of digital access and digital application,and selects the Gini coefficient and the Terrell index to measure inequality in digital access and digital application in the manufacturing industry,thus exploring the dynamic evolutionary characteristics and convergent changes of digital inequality.Further,the driving mechanisms to alleviate the inequality of digital access and digital application in China's manufacturing industry are examined from the perspective of inter-firm technological spillover effects.It is found that the differences in the growth of digital access and digital application are mainly affected by three mechanisms,namely,the demonstration effect,competition effect,and osmosis effect among firms.This study provides a scientific method to measure enterprise digital inequality,shows the dynamic evolution of digital inequality in China's manufacturing industry from a spatial and temporal perspective,and provides a basis for understanding the con-vergence drivers of digital inequality in the manufacturing industry.The results of the study show that the degree and rate of decline of digital application inequality in the manufacturing industry are higher than that of digital access inequality,and the two are opposite in terms of the dimensional stability of digital inequality.The convergence test results show that there are σ-convergence characteristics of fluctuating decline in the digital access and digital application in manufacturing enterprises,and absolute β-convergence and conditional β-con-vergence characteristics with the same convergence trend at the industry and regional levels.Further mechanism test con-firms that digital access and digital application inequality is mainly influenced by the technology spillover effect among en-terprises.The demonstration effect,competition effect,and penetration effect among enterprises simultaneously drive the reduction of digital access and digital application inequality,and the competition effect and penetration effect are more ob-vious for digital applications.The marginal contributions of this study are reflected in the following aspects.Firstly,our study enriches relevant re-search on digital inequality in Chinese manufacturing firms.Given that previous studies have only focused on digital in-equality at the national,regional,or individual level,and little has been done to explore digital inequality in manufactur-ing firms,this study explores the connotation of digital inequality in Chinese manufacturing firms,categorizing it into digi-tal access inequality and digital application inequality.Secondly,this study carries out the scientific measurement and characterization of digital inequality.The Gini coefficient and Terrell index are chosen to reasonably measure inequality of digital access and digital application in the Chinese manufacturing industry,and the Markov chain is used to reveal the dy-namic evolution trend of overall and regional digital inequality in the Chinese manufacturing industry,and then to test the convergence characteristics of digital access and application inequality.Thirdly,this study explores the mechanism of nar-rowing digital access and digital application inequality in manufacturing enterprises.It decomposes inter-firm digital tech-nology spillover into three dimensions:demonstration effect,competition effect,and penetration effect,providing a refer-ence for existing studies.
Digital InequalityDigital AccessDigital ApplicationsGini CoefficientTechnology Spillovers
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
