Study Of The Digital Economy On The Low Carbon Development In Chinese Cities

Recently,global environmental governance has become a hot topic.The economic boom caused by the globalization has also led to declining reserves of fossil energy sources such as coal,oil and gas,and global climate change and the resulting melting of polar glaciers are sounding alarm bells for mankind.China’s economic performance continues to show up,with some of the highest growth rates in the world,as liberalizing reforms accelerate.But environmental problems caused by rapid economic development are attaching increasingly attention,and low carbon concept is being integrated into all aspects of human life.The focus of low-carbon development lies in cities,and the set of indicators can be used to assess the level of low-carbon development of cities and is of great practical importance to promote the sustainable development and improve their response to climate change.The digital economy has become the most typical high-tech industry,and its deep integration with other industries has played a significant role in improving industrial efficiency and promoting new industries and low-carbon energy development in Chinese cities,and plays a key role in encouraging low-carbon development in Chinese cities.This thesis tries to figure out the relationship between digital economy and low-carbon and after reviewing the relevant literature,theoretically infers the mechanism and explores in depth what impact the development of the digital economy will have on urban decarbonization.Using 278 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011-2019 to construct panel data,this thesis uses the main component analysis to measure the digital economy,and combined with national policies on low-carbon urban construction and based on the Shi et al.(2018),to apply the entropy valuation method to measure the development of low-carbon cities and to test the digital economy on the level of development of low-carbon cities in China empirically.The main findings are as follows:(1)The baseline regression results show that the digital economy significantly enhances the level of urban decarbonization,regardless of whether the control variables are considered or not.(2)Mechanism tests show that the digital economy can enhance urban decarbonization by reducing the intensity of urban energy consumption and increasing urban green technology innovation.(3)Robustness tests showed that replacing explanatory variables,using instrumental variables,lagging explanatory variables by one period and reducing the sample size all supported the baseline regression findings.(4)Further analysis revealed that there is regional heterogeneity and infrastructure heterogeneity in the digital economy’s impact on the level of decarbonization in cities,specifically,there is a significant contribution to decarbonization in cities in the eastern region,but an inhibiting effect at the central region,and no significant effect at the western region.In terms of infrastructure,the digital economy does not have a catalytic effect on the level of decarbonization of cities in areas with high levels of infrastructure,but has a significant effect on the level of decarbonization of cities in areas with low levels of infrastructure.In conclusion,the following policy recommendations are proposed: First,increase the intensity of investment in digital technology innovation to promote low-carbon urban construction.Second,promote urban technological innovation and strive to reduce consumption and increase efficiency.Third,to take into account the differences in regional endowments and promote urban low-carbon construction according to local conditions.