Research On The Impact Of Digital Economy On Green Innovation

In recent years,China’s economy continues to develop rapidly,urbanization and industrialization process continues to advance,natural resources depletion,ecosystem degradation,environmental pollution and other issues have gradually become the bottleneck restricting economic and social development,green development is facing tests.As an important way to solve the conflict between China’s economic growth and environmental pollution,green innovation has become the core driving force and practical requirements for regional high-quality development.Driven by a new round of information technology revolution,the vigorous development of the digital economy is reshaping the economic structure and form,which provides new solutions to improve the environmental pollution problems caused by traditional industries.As a new engine driving innovation,it is of great practical significance to explore the role of digital economy in breaking through environmental resource constraints and promoting the improvement of green innovation level for the high-quality development of China’s economy.On the basis of combing the existing related research,starting from the endogenous economic growth theory,Schumpeter’s innovation theory and sustainable development theory,this paper discusses the impact and mechanism of digital economy on green innovation at the macro and micro levels.Then,using the panel data of 280 cities and 3495 A-share listed companies in China from 2003 to 2020,the impact of digital economy on green innovation and its impact mechanism are proved from the macro and micro levels,and the heterogeneity analysis is carried out.In addition,this paper also carries out the expansibility analysis from three aspects:spatial factors,macroeconomic policies and economic consequences,and makes relevant expansions to this research.The results show that digital economy can positively affect green innovation,which can positively affect both urban green innovation and enterprise green innovation.This conclusion is still robust after the robustness test and the endogeneity test.In the part of mechanism testing,this paper constructs an intermediary effect model to empirically test the mechanism proposed in the theoretical analysis.It is found that the development of digital economy can indeed promote urban green innovation by promoting the improvement of human capital level and the optimization of industrial structure,and can also promote the green innovation of enterprises by alleviating the financing constraints of enterprises and promoting the performance of social responsibility of enterprises.In the heterogeneity analysis,it is found that the conclusions of this paper are applicable to both high and low pollution areas and enterprises,but the impact on high pollution areas and enterprises is greater.In the extended analysis,it is found that the development of digital economy can still significantly improve the level of green innovation in the region when considering spatial factors,and there is a spatial spillover effect that fluctuates with the increase of distance.In addition,this paper also takes the smart city pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment of digital economy to carry out the regression in the form of difference of differences,and finds that the digital economy can still positively affect the green innovation of cities.Finally,the economic consequences were tested,and it was found that the impact of digital economy on urban green innovation would eventually reduce the city’s future carbon emissions and improve the urban ecological environment.The impact of digital economy on enterprise green innovation will eventually improve the total factor productivity of enterprises in the future and create a good prospect for enterprises.This paper affirmed the positive environmental externalities of digital economy from the perspective of green innovation,and provided certain enlightenment for promoting the further development of digital economy and green innovation.