Smart Carbon Reduction: The Effect and Mechanism of Digital Economy Development on Urban Carbon Emissions

QIN Bing-tao; YU Yong-wei; GE Li-ming; GUO Yuan-guo

Volume 38 Issue 3

May 2023

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QIN Bing-tao, YU Yong-wei, GE Li-ming, GUO Yuan-guo. Smart Carbon Reduction: The Effect and Mechanism of Digital Economy Development on Urban Carbon Emissions[J]. Journal of Guangdong University of Finance & Economics, 2023, 38(3): 4-23.

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QIN Bing-tao, YU Yong-wei, GE Li-ming, GUO Yuan-guo. Smart Carbon Reduction: The Effect and Mechanism of Digital Economy Development on Urban Carbon Emissions[J]. Journal of Guangdong University of Finance & Economics, 2023, 38(3): 4-23.

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Smart Carbon Reduction: The Effect and Mechanism of Digital Economy Development on Urban Carbon Emissions

1.
School of Management, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093
2.
School of Urban and Regional Science, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China
3.
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore 259772

Received Date: 2023-01-14
Available Online: 2023-07-07
Publish Date: 2023-05-28

Abstract

Abstract

While reshaping China's economic development trajectory in the post-COVID-19 era, digital economy also has a profound impact on China's "dual carbon" process. In this paper, the smart city pilot policy is taken as the proxy variable for the development of digital economy. Based on the panel data of 281 cities at the prefecture level and above in China from 2006 to 2019, the carbon emission reduction effect of smart city construction under the perspective of digital empowerment is empirically investigated by comprehensive use of the differential method, the two-stage three-step method and the spatial differential method. The conclusions show that compared with non-pilot cities, the carbon emissions of pilot smart cities are reduced by 2.8% on average, which means that the construction of smart cities significantly reduces the level of carbon emissions. This conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests, such as changing the estimation model and selecting the control group. Mechanism studies show that smart city construction has transformed urban development from the factor and investment-driven to the innovation-driven, and promoted urban low-carbon transformation through digital empowerment to exert energy upgrading effect, life transformation effect and resource allocation effect. The results from quantitative decomposition show that the above mechanism contributed more than 80% of the explanatory effect. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the carbon emission reduction effect of digital economy development is more obvious in large and above scale cities, more developed regions in eastern and southern China, and cities with high endowment of human, financial and physical resources. The spatial effect analysis shows that with the increase of distance threshold, the spillover effect generated by smart city construction is significantly reduced, and the conclusion is still valid after the use of differential spatial Durbin model. This paper not only provides new documentary evidence for the causal relationship between digital economy development and carbon emission governance, but also has important practical significance for exploring how to use digital economy to enable green and low-carbon transition in the post-pandemic period, so as to achieve high-quality economic development.
- digital economy,
- carbon emission,
- digital empowerment,
- smart carbon reduction,
- smart city,
- carbon emission reduction effect,
- innovation drive

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References(43)

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