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Driving impact and spatial effect of the digital economy development on carbon emissions in typical cities: a case study of Zhejiang, China

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Abstract

The digital economy (DE) not only drives economic innovation and development but also has significant environmental effects by promoting lower carbon emissions. To investigate the spatial effects of DE on urban carbon emissions, this study comprehensively measures the level of DE development based on the panel data from 11 typical cities in Zhejiang Province from 2011 to 2020, by comparing analysis using different regression models. The following conclusions are obtained: (1) The total carbon emissions (TC) of Zhejiang cities in general show a fluctuating change trend of first increasing and then slowly decreasing, while carbon emission intensity and carbon emission per capita in general show a fluctuating change trend of decreasing. Cities with high TC are primarily concentrated in the Hangzhou Bay city cluster, accounted for 62 ~ 65% of the province’s carbon emissions. The development of the DE in Zhejiang cities shows steady growth, but there are large differences among cities, with Hangzhou and Ningbo standing out as particularly prominent. (2) There is a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between the DE and the level of carbon emissions in Zhejiang Province. The influence coefficient of the DE on the primary term of TC is 0.613, and the influence coefficient of the quadratic term of TC is − 1.008. (3) In terms of the spatial spillover effect of the DE on carbon emissions, the study finds that compared to the direct effect, the spatial spillover effect is not significant. However, the allocation of transport resources shows a positive spatial spillover effect (increasing carbon emissions, coefficient value is 0.138), while technological progress shows a somewhat negative spatial spillover effect (decreasing carbon emissions, coefficient value is − 0.035). (4) The study also finds that the smart city pilot policy significantly reduces urban carbon emissions. Moreover, the effect of the DE on carbon emissions is confirmed through the significance test of the quadratic term when replacing the geographical and economic distance weight matrices. This indicates that the empirical findings are robust to these tests. Finally, several countermeasures to reduce carbon emissions are proposed from the perspective of DE development.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Major Humanities and Social Sciences Research Projects in Zhejiang Higher Education Institutions (Grant Number: 2023QN131).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center of Industrial Economy Around Hangzhou Bay, Ningbo Polytechnic, Ningbo, 315800, China

    Bin Jiang, Lei Ding, Qiong Zhang & Yidi Hua

  2. Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China

    Xuejuan Fang

  3. Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China

    Xuejuan Fang

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  1. Bin Jiang
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Contributions

Bin Jiang: Data analysis, writing the original manuscript, revising the manuscript, and funding acquisition. Lei Ding: Conceptualization framework and writing original draft. Xuejuan Fang: Design of the research, writing original draft, and supervision. Qiong Zhang: Analysis and explanation results. Yidi Hua: Analysis and explanation results. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

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Correspondence to Xuejuan Fang.

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Jiang, B., Ding, L., Fang, X. et al. Driving impact and spatial effect of the digital economy development on carbon emissions in typical cities: a case study of Zhejiang, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 106390–106407 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-29855-1

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