Towards sustainable development in China: How do green technology innovation and resource misallocation affect carbon emission performance?

Nonlinear impact of digital economy on carbon intensity: the moderating role of low-carbon regulation

The development of the digital economy is an effective way to mitigate the carbon emission problem in the broader setting of the significant data era and green development. Based on the panel data of 271 cities in China from 2011 to 2019, this paper constructs a bidirectional fixed model to analyze the nonlinear effect of the digital economy (DE) on carbon intensity (CI) and the moderating role of low-carbon regulation from theoretical and empirical perspectives. The results show that (1) DE has an enormous inverted U-shaped impact on CI. The findings remain after introducing instrumental variables to mitigate endogeneity and robustness tests. (2) Low-carbon regulation (CP) can strengthen the inverted U-shaped impact between the two and shift the inflection point to the left. (3) Heterogeneity analysis shows that the inverted U-shaped effect of DE on CI is more significant in the central and western regions, high human capital (HC) regions, and high urbanization regions. (4) The mediating effect of energy mix (EM) and green technology innovation (GTI) still hold after introducing instrumental variables to alleviate the endogenous effect of the intermediary effect. This study suggests that the adoption of carbon emission reduction strategies, which will more effectively lower carbon intensity CI, should go hand in hand with the development of DE.

How does technological innovation affect carbon emission efficiency in the Yellow River Economic Belt: the moderating role of government support and marketization

The Yellow River Economic Belt (YREB) is a fundamental ecological protection barrier for China. Its carbon pollution issues are currently severe owing to the extensive energy consumption and unsatisfactory industrial constructions. In this context, this paper estimates carbon emission efficiency (CEE) based on the panel data from 56 cities in the YREB during the period 2006-2019 and analyzes its spatial distribution characteristics. Additionally, the spatial Durbin model (SDM) is utilized to examine the effect of technological innovation (TI) on CEE as a result of the moderating effects of government support (GS) and marketization (MA), respectively. The results indicated that (i) in the YREB, CEE exhibited significant spatial autocorrelation characteristics; (ii) TI negatively affected local CEE; (iii) the moderating effect of local GS on the relationship between TI and CEE in the local area was negative, but its spatial spillover effect was still not significant; (iv) the moderating effect of local MA on the relationship between TI and CEE in the local area was also negative, but positive in the surrounding areas. Based on the empirical analysis, a series of policy suggestions are proposed to improve the YREB's CEE.

Impact of Digital Transformation on Enterprise Carbon Intensity: The Moderating Role of Digital Information Resources

In the context of China's "digital power" strategy, the realization of a green and low-carbon shift in manufacturing has become a necessary condition to promote the economy, and the digital factor has increasingly become a new driving force. The text mining and IPCC methods were used to measure manufacturing enterprise digitalization and the level of enterprise carbon emission intensity from 2011 to 2021, respectively. This study then explored the impact of digitalization on manufacturing enterprise carbon emission intensity based on the least squares method model and instrumental variable method model. This research comes to three conclusions. (1) Digitalization can significantly reduce the enterprise carbon emission intensity of China's manufacturing industry, and the influence shows a "marginal increase." (2) Notably, a mechanism analysis indicates the intermediary effect sizes of four crucial intermediaries: green technology innovation > financing constraint > information asymmetry > energy use efficiency. Interestingly, digital information resources positively moderate the positive effect of digitalization on carbon emission intensity through three paths: financing constraints, green technology innovation, and information asymmetry. (3) The influence shows evident signs of heterogeneity-as environmental regulation, financial development, executive education, and R&D quality advance, the inhibiting effect of digitalization on enterprise carbon emission intensity becomes more pronounced. Finally, corresponding policy suggestions are proposed.