Research On The Impact Of Digital Economy On China’s Carbon Emission Intensity

Currently,China is not only in a critical period of industrial transformation with high energy consumption and high emission,but also an important period of striving for carbon peak and carbon neutrality.The situation of reduction is very serious.At the same time,with the development of the Internet,big data and other next-generation information and communication technologies,the fourth industrial revolution with digital technology at its core is driving the vigorous development of the digital economy.Based on the construction of digital power and the "double carbon" goal,we will put digital economy and carbon emission intensity in the same framework,and seek solutions for carbon emission reduction supported by digital economy.Based on this,this thesis first sorts out relevant theories and studies on digital economy and carbon emission intensity.Secondly,the effect mechanism of digital economy on carbon emission intensity is analyzed.Thirdly,the level of digital economy in China is measured by entropy method,and the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of digital economy and carbon emission intensity are investigated.Finally,based on the panel data of 30 inland provinces from 2011 to 2019,the fixed effect model and intermediary effect model are selected to conduct an empirical study on the direction of action,internal mechanism and regional heterogeneity between the two.Meanwhile,this thesis uses the "Broadband China" policy to test robustness from a more detailed level and selects the instrumental variable method to mitigate endogeneity issues.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The spatial and temporal characteristics of digital economy and carbon emission intensity are significantly different.China’s digital economy shows an overall trend of growth,but the development is unbalanced among regions,characterized by "high in the east,low in the central and western regions,high in the south and low in the north".The overall trend of carbon emission intensity is decreasing,with each province showing a significant "high in the central and western regions and low in the east,high in the north and low in the south".(2)Benchmark regression shows that digital economy can significantly reduce carbon intensity and help reduce carbon emissions in China.Quantile regressions show that the digital economy is more effective in reducing emissions in medium carbon intensity regions.The intermediate effect test finds that industrial upgrading,energy mix and technological innovation are important transmission mechanisms for digital economy to curb carbon emission intensity.(3)Heterogeneity analysis shows that there are differences in the effect of digital economy on carbon intensity across regions and resource endowments.When the whole sample is divided by region,digital economy significantly reduces carbon intensity of eastern and southern regions,that is,its carbon reduction effect is more pronounced in the economically developed regions.When the whole sample is divided by type of resource endowment,it has a significant effect on carbon emission reduction in nonresource-based provinces.At last,based on the above conclusions,the article gives reasonable policy recommendations from the perspectives of improving the development speed and quality of digital economy,paying attention to the intermediary path of digital economy affecting carbon emission intensity,and implementing digital economy development strategies according to local conditions.This paper has 13 figures,23 tables and 146 references.