How Does the Digital Economy Affect the Intensity of Carbon Emissions:Based on the Dual Perspectives of Industrial Structure Upgrading and Rationalization
Faced with global climate change,many countries around the world have proposed policy goals to reduce carbon emissions.The"dual carbon"target proposed by China in 2020 has become an important direction for optimizing and adjusting China's industrial structure.At the same time,the proportion of digital economy in China's national economic system is increasing.With the development of the digital economy,the integration of"digitalization&greenization"has be-come a new focus for the comprehensive green transformation of China's economic and social development.However,as a high energy consuming emerging economic form,the digital economy also consumes a large amount of electricity.There-fore,exploring whether the digital economy at the urban level can effectively reduce carbon emission intensity is an extreme-ly important academic issue.Especially,it is urgent to further explore the mechanism by which the digital economy affects carbon emissions in order to formulate specific policies for China to achieve its"dual carbon"strategic goals.The article uses panel data from 280 cities in China from 2011 to 2019,and based on detailed calculations of the digital economy,carbon emission intensity,industrial structure upgrading,and industrial structure rationalization,comprehensively uses the two-way fixed effects model,mediation effect model,mediation threshold effect model,double difference method,and instrumental variable method to test the impact of the digital economy on carbon emission intensity,as well as the role of industrial structure upgrading and industrial structure rationalization in it,and further tests the heterogeneity of this effect among different regions and types of cities.The research results indicate that:(1)The digital economy effectively reduces the carbon emission intensity of Chinese cities,and the conclusion remains robust even after replacing the dependent variable,excluding singular values,considering the impact of lag effects,removing samples from energy rich provinces,ex-cluding environmental policy interference,and introducing province and year interaction effects;(2)In order to overcome potential endogeneity issues,the article selected historical postal and telecommunications data and the average digital econo-my of other cities within the province as instrumental variables for testing,and used the difference in differences method to test the"Broadband China"pilot cities as exogenous policy shocks.The above results are still consistent with the conclu-sions of the benchmark regression;(3)The mediating effect indicates that the upgrading and rationalization of industrial structure play a mediating role in the process of reducing carbon emission intensity in the digital economy.Further mediat-ing threshold effects show that when the mediating variables of industrial structure upgrading and rationalization are within a certain range,the mediating effect is strongest,and beyond this range,it gradually weakens or even disappears;(4)Hetero-geneity analysis shows that the digital economy in Northeast China has no significant impact on carbon emission intensity,while it exhibits a significant inhibitory effect in cities in other regions.In addition,the carbon emission reduction effect of the digital economy is most significant in non resource-based cities,high-income cities,high-tech investment cities,and cit-ies with abundant human capital.Based on the above research results,this article proposes the following policy recommendations:firstly,to leverage the role of digital economy in empowering and increasing efficiency,and integrate it into the implementation process of the"dual carbon"strategy,in order to find a feasible path for the comprehensive green transformation of urban economy and society;Secondly,through the digital economy,industrial structure upgrading and optimization can be achieved,and the correlation and coordination between industries can be promoted,thereby promoting energy conservation and carbon reduc-tion;Thirdly,it is necessary to coordinate the development of the digital economy in different regions and types of cities,and to play a role in reducing carbon emissions through the digital economy according to local conditions.
digital economycarbon emission intensityindustrial structure upgradingindustrial structure rationaliza-tion
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
