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The impact of digital economy on total factor carbon productivity: the threshold effect of technology accumulation

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Abstract

This research focuses on the impact of the digital economy on total factor carbon productivity. Based on the panel data of China’s provinces from 2009 to 2019, this paper incorporates undesired output, namely carbon emissions, into the evaluation index system, and uses the SBM-ML index to measure regional total factor carbon productivity, and uses the RAGA-PP model to measure the digital economy development index, which includes three dimensions: digital infrastructure, digital industry development, and digital economic environment. Moreover, this paper incorporates the heterogeneous threshold of technological accumulation into the framework of the impact mechanism of total factor carbon productivity and builds a threshold model to examine the impact of the digital economy on total factor carbon productivity under different technological accumulation thresholds. The research shows that, first, during the sample period, total factor carbon productivity fluctuated around the frontier, showing a certain upward trend, with significant regional heterogeneity. Second, the digital economy has a promotional effect on the total factor carbon productivity level in China and can become the new energy for the country to improve the level of green development. Third, the impact of the digital economy on total factor carbon productivity presents a significant heterogeneous threshold effect of technological accumulation, along with the increasing level of technology accumulation, the effective coefficient of the digital economy on total factor carbon productivity is increasing, and the level of significance is increasing. Last, the low-carbon driving mechanism of the digital economy has temporal and spatial heterogeneity of regional technology accumulation levels. The conclusions of this paper provide an effective reference for exploring the realization mechanism of regional total factor carbon productivity improvement, ecological civilization construction, and high-quality economic development.

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Data Availability

All data can be downloaded from China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to editors and anonymous reviews for reviewing this paper.

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Humanities and Social Science project of Shandong Province (2021-ZXCY-16) and Social Science Planning Project of Shandong Province (21CPYJ21).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Business School, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, 255012, People’s Republic of China

    Dongri Han

  2. Center for Agricultural-Sage Culture Studies, Weifang University of Science and Technology, Weifang, 262700, People’s Republic of China

    Yingying Ding

  3. School of Economics and Management, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, 150000, People’s Republic of China

    Ziyi Shi

  4. Department of Economics and Management, University of Science and Technology, Weifang, 262700, People’s Republic of China

    Yao He

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  1. Dongri Han
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  2. Yingying Ding
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Contributions

Conceptualization: Dongri Han, Yingying Ding; methodology: Dongri Han, Ziyi Shi; software: Dongri Han; writing-original draft: Ziyi Shi, Yao He; writing—review and editing: Dongri Han, Ziyi Shi; funding acquisition: Yingying Ding; resources: Yingying Ding; supervision: Dongri Han.

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Correspondence to Yingying Ding.

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Han, D., Ding, Y., Shi, Z. et al. The impact of digital economy on total factor carbon productivity: the threshold effect of technology accumulation. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 55691–55706 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19721-x

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