Research On The Impact Of Digital Economy On Green Innovation In The Yangtze River Economic Belt

According to the spirit of the fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee,nowadays China’s economic and social construction has stepped into a new stage of development,and the "digital economy" has increasingly become a powerful new driving force for the growth of China‘s economy,playing a driving and leading role in domestic economic and social construction and many other fields.In addition,China’s economy has already shifted from a stage of high-speed growth to a stage of high-quality development,and green development and innovation-driven development are important aspects of China’s high-quality development.In order to implement the new development concept,China has a more urgent need for "green innovation" in the new era.As one of China’s "three support belts" strategy,the Yangtze River Economic Belt is not only the "important support belt of economic and social development",but also the "pioneering demonstration belt of ecological civilization construction".Under the guidance of new development concept,on the one hand,the development of the Yangtze Economic Belt needs to adhere to ecological priority and green development;on the other hand,its economic growth pattern needs to change from factor-driven to innovation-driven.And the digital economy as the momentum of economic growth,plays an important role in the aspect of promoting green development and the innovation output.Therefore,it is necessary to combine the strategic orientation of the Yangtze River Economic Belt,and explore the impact of digital economy development on green innovation in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.First of all,on the basis of reviewing and combing existed relevant research,this paper started from the definition of digital economy and green innovation,based on the related theory,and analyzed the influence mechanism of digital economy on green innovation from the three directions,that is the direct effect,spatial spillover effect and regional heterogeneity effect,then further put forward the core assumption of this study;Secondly,this paper took the panel data of prefecture-level and above cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2010 to 2019 as research samples,combined with the existed studies of scholars,and use the entropy weight method to comprehensively measure the digital economy,and analyzed the general development situation,temporal evolution and spatial evolution characteristics.As for green innovation,this paper chose the number of green invention patents and green utility model patents obtained in the region during the same period as its representative indexes,and analyzed its general development situation,temporal evolution and spatial evolution characteristics too.Then,on the basis of analyzing whether there is spatial autocorrelation between digital economy and green innovation respectively,this paper used the fixed effect model to analyze whether there is direct influence of digital economy on green innovation and the direction of the influence.After this,as to the problem of whether digital economy has spatial spillover effect on green innovation,this paper,based on different spatial weight matrices,constructed the spatial Dubin bidirectional fixed effects model and spatial Dubin random effects model respectively to conduct empirical tests.In addition,in order to further analyze the spatial effect of digital economy on green innovation,this paper,by refining spatial Dubin model,decomposed the influence of digital economy and control variables on green innovation into direct effect,spatial spillover effect and total effect,and made the relevant explanations.At last,on the basis of the robustness test and endogeneity test of the model,this paper divided the the Yangtze River Economic Belt into three regions,that is upper,middle and downstream regions,and conducted heterogeneity analysis on the impact of digital economy on green innovation,then put forward corresponding policy suggestions according to the research results.The main research results of this paper could be summarized as follows: Firstly,during the period from 2010 to 2019,in terms of general situation of development,the digital economy and green innovation in the prefecture-level and above cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt across the country have good basic conditions of development and the overall situation is relatively good,and the overall situation of digital economy and green innovation both continue to improve in terms of temporal evolution characteristics,and the spatial agglomeration is obvious in the aspect of spatial evolution characteristics.From the perspective of different regions,the downstream region is generally better developed,while the middle and upstream regions are relatively poor and similar.Secondly,whether from the perspective of global or local autocorrelation,digital economy and green innovation both have obvious spatial clustering phenomenon in spatial distribution.Thirdly,digital economy has a significant positive effect on green innovation,and this conclusion is still valid after the robustness test and endogeneity test.Fourthly,digital economy has a significant spatial spillover effect on green innovation,and from the perspective of effect decomposition,the overall impact of digital economy on green innovation is mainly achieved through spatial spillover effect.Fifthly,there is spatial heterogeneity in the impact of digital economy on green innovation.That is,the impact of digital economy on green innovation in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River Economic Belt is the strongest,followed by the middle reaches,and the weakest in the upper reaches.Based on the above conclusions,this paper put forward the following countermeasures and suggestions as follows: In the first place,strengthen the construction of digital economy infrastructure,including related hardware and software and platform construction,as well as related legal and regulatory systems.In the second place,attach importance to the spatial spillover effect of digital economy.Digital economy has a relatively convenient spillover mechanism.By giving full play to the positive role of digital economy such as knowledge spillover,the region with better digital economy can drive the surrounding region and strengthen its demonstration leading role.In the third place,create a good environment for green innovation and actively foster green innovation subjects.For example,support the development of financial industry and increase government investment in science and technology.As enterprises are the main embodiment of regional green innovation level and ability,local governments could guide enterprises to carry out green innovation through various preferential measures.In the fourth place,promote the coordinated development of digital economy in different regions and reduce the problem of unbalanced development.On the one hand,regions with relatively backward development of digital economy need to learn the development model of relatively developed regions and summarize their successful experience;on the other hand,government agencies need to increase the support of funds,technology and other aspects for relatively backward regions.