Digital Economy and Environmental Sustainability: Do Information Communication and Technology (ICT) and Economic Complexity Matter?

Exploring the path of digital governance of urban industrial pollution: empirical evidence from 280 cities in China

Urban industrial pollution plays a dominant role in environmental pollution in China. Exploring the digital governance path of urban industrial pollution can provide strong support for improving environmental quality. This article empirically investigates the role and path of digitalization in the governance of urban industrial pollution from three dimensions: economic scale, structural scale, and technological scale. The results show that there is an inverted "U"-shaped relationship between digitalization and urban industrial pollution, with initial promotion followed by suppression. Among them, economic scale, industrial transformation and upgrading, and green innovation are the paths for digital governance of urban industrial pollution. In addition, there is a chain path of "green innovation-industrial transformation and upgrading" between the two. Through spatial Durbin model and regional heterogeneity analysis, it is found that digitalization has a spatial spillover effect on urban industrial pollution control, and eastern regions, regions with high economic development level and industrialized cities benefit more from digital urban industrial pollution control. The research conclusions of this article provide references for the Chinese government to formulate relevant policies, deepen the integration of digitalization and urban industrial pollution, and promote digital governance of urban industrial pollution.

Modeling the ecological footprint and assessing its influential factors: A systematic review

BACKGROUND

Various factors have been found responsible for the increment in ecological footprint resulting difficulties in maintaining environmental sustainability. This has been noticed through a modeling perspective. Identifying the factors affecting Ecological Footprint helps policymakers to formulate policies regarding sustainability. However, studies conducted based upon systematic reviews on Ecological Footprint through modeling are still limited.

OBJECTIVE

This study intends to identify influential factors associated with ecological footprint through a systematic review.

METHODS

ProQuest, Science Direct, Scopus, and Web of Science databases were used to search literature systematically. Particular keywords and Boolean operators were applied to dig out relevant studies for the review. Peer-reviewed research articles published in the English language till September 13, 2023, were incorporated for the analysis. Following the guidelines of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA), 1011 articles were identified from four different databases and only 37 research papers were eligible for this study. These articles were assessed and relevant information was extracted and then amalgamated into the systematic review.

RESULTS

Gross domestic product, urbanization, energy consumption, renewable energy, non-renewable energy, natural resources, bio-capacity, human capital, foreign direct investment, trade openness, and financial development were observed as key factors of the ecological footprint.

CONCLUSION

Factors known to influence ecological footprint need to be addressed properly for environmental sustainability including widespread use of renewable energy.

Green growth as a determinant of ecological footprint: Do ICT diffusion, environmental innovation, and natural resources matter?

The nexus between green growth and ecological footprint is associated with crucial environmental implications. But this domain is not examined sufficiently and provides ambiguous findings. Furthermore, these studies have not addressed the role of natural resources, environmental innovation, and ICT in influencing ecological footprint. Our study analyzes the impact of green growth, ICT, environmental innovation, and natural resources on the ecological footprint ofemerging-7 and developed-7 economies. We employed CS-ARDL methodology to draw the long-run and short-run estimates of the said relationships. The obtained findings show that green growth, ICT, and environmental innovation reduce the ecological footprint in emerging economies in the long run. However, natural resources enhance the ecological footprint in emerging economies in the long run. Green growth, ICT, natural resources, and environmental innovation reduce the ecological footprint in the long run in developed economies. Based on these outcomes, the study recommends important policy suggestions.

Has the digital economy improved the ecological environment? Empirical evidence from China

The main objectives of this study incorporate the ecological environment index (ENV) and the digital economy index (DIG) into the environmental Kuznets (EKC) model and examine the income effects, scale effects, structural effects, technology effects, and government expenditures on the ecological environment, collating panel data for 31 provincial administrative regions in China over the period 2011-2019. The panel entropy value method was first applied to calculate the ecological environment index (ENV) and the digital economy composite index (DIG). Secondly, a threshold effect test is conducted with the digital economy as the threshold variable, and it is found that there are two threshold values in the model. From the threshold regression results, the impact of the digital economy on the ecological environment shows a positive "U" shape. At this stage, except for individual years in each province, most of the provinces are in the second half of the positive "U" curve. The coefficients of the income effect and scale effect are not significant, while the coefficients of structural effect and technology effect and government expenditure are significantly positive. From the results of the study, it is clear that the digital economy has a significant contribution to the improvement of the ecological environment in China at this stage. Policymakers should go further to promote the development of the digital economy while encouraging regional industrial structure optimization and increasing technological input support to ensure that the environment and economic development are coordinated in the digital economy era.

Does the Digital Economy Promote the Reduction of Urban Carbon Emission Intensity?

The impact of the digital economy is increasing, and its environmental effect has attracted more and more attention. The digital economy promotes the improvement of production efficiency and the government's environmental governance capacity, and contributes to the reduction of urban carbon emission intensity. In order to study the impact of digital economy development on urban carbon emission intensity, this paper analyzes the theoretical basis of the digital economy on the reduction of carbon emission intensity, and then, based on the panel data of cities from 2011 to 2019, uses the two-way fixed effect model for empirical testing. The regression results show that the development of the digital economy has promoted the reduction of carbon emission intensity of cities, promoted the green transformation and upgrading of cities, and lays a foundation for China to achieve carbon peaking and carbon neutralization through the improvement of human capital investment and green innovation level. The basic conclusion is robust by changing core explanatory variables, changing samples, replacing regression methods, and shrinking and truncating tests. The impact of the digital economy on urban carbon emission intensity varies with the location, grade and size of the city. Specifically, the development of the digital economy in cities in the eastern and central regions, cities at or above the sub provincial level, large cities and non-resource-based cities has promoted the reduction of urban carbon emission intensity. In terms of resource-based cities, the development of the digital economy in renewable resource-based cities and resource-based cities dominated by iron ore and oil mining has promoted the decline in urban carbon emission reduction intensity.

Research on Theoretical Mechanism and Promotion Path of Digital Economy Driving China's Green Development under "Double Carbon" Background

(1) Background: Under the background of building a new pattern of "double cycle" development, the green meaning of the digital economy is highly valued. The innovative feature of the digital economy is forming a new economic growth pole, and gradually becomes the driving force for China's economic restructuring and green development; (2) methods: this paper empirically tests whether the digital economy can promote green development by using various econometric models based on panel dataset with 30 provinces from 2011 to 2019 in mainland China and measuring the development level of the digital economy and the greening index; (3) results: it is found that the digital economy can directly boost green development in greening degree of economic growth, resources and environment-carrying potential, and government policy support. The digital economy's influence on green development has an inverted U-shaped trend; environmental control is an effective regulatory variable with a substitution effect on green development. With an obvious regional heterogeneity, the digital economy promotes green development; the digital economy can greatly affect green growth through technical innovation through mechanism analysis. The robustness test supports the above conclusion; (4) conclusions: the findings provide a foundation for multi-party policymakers to effectively formulate and implement policies for the digital economy that encourage green growth.