Study On The Impact Of Digital Economy On Carbon Emission In Yangtze River Delta

With the continuous development of digital economy,the current digital economy has become the economic growth pole of the Yangtze River Delta.Across the country,the digital economy in the Yangtze River Delta exceeded 30% of the country in 2019.From the perspective of the Yangtze River Delta region,the digital economy accounts for more than40% of the regional GDP,and the growth rate is more than 18 percentage points.However,economic development inevitably leads to a large amount of energy consumption.In 2019,coal consumption in the Yangtze River Delta exceeded 595 million tons,accounting for 21.17 percent of the country’s total coal consumption.As the "14th Five-Year" Comprehensive Work Plan for energy conservation and emission Reduction has been issued,carbon emission reduction is required to be an important strategic direction for the construction of ecological civilization in each region.Therefore,it is of far-reaching significance to deeply explore the efficiency and mechanism of digital economy in reducing carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Delta region for early realization of the "double carbon" goal proposed by national leaders.Based on the above background,this paper takes the period from 2011 to 2019 as the research time,takes 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta as the research samples,and sorts them into panel data.First of all,this paper expounds the relevant theories of carbon emissions,sorts out the research progress of digital economy and carbon emissions,and describes the development status of carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Delta in detail.Secondly,this paper empirically analyzes the relationship between digital economy and carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Delta region from a nonlinear perspective,and tests the influencing mechanism of industrial structure upgrading and energy structure optimization to curb carbon emissions.Finally,considering the spatial characteristics of digital economy and carbon emissions,this paper further extends to the spatial scope and uses SAR model to test the spatial characteristics of the relationship between digital economy and carbon emissions and determine whether there will be spatial spillover effect.According to the empirical study,it is concluded that:(1)the digital economy has an inverted U-shaped influence on carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Delta.(2)The impact of digital economy on carbon emissions in Jiangsu,Zhejiang and Anhui regions is heterogeneous.The development of digital economy in Anhui Province brings the largest emission reduction efficiency,which is the first to reach the emission reduction inflection point compared with Jiangsu and Zhejiang Province.(3)Digital economy can effectively restrain carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Delta through the two intermediary channels of energy structure optimization and industrial structure upgrading.(4)In three different spatial weight matrices,digital economy has an inverted U-shaped spatial effect on carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Delta,and under the spatial adjacency matrix,digital economy has a significant spillover on carbon emissions of neighboring cities.Different from most literatures that analyze the impact of digital economy on carbon emissions at the national level,this paper analyzes 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta from the perspective of urban agglomeration.Different from some literatures that only study the relationship between digital economy and carbon emission from the perspective of linear relationship,this paper comprehensively examines the whole process of emission reduction of digital economy in the Yangtze River Delta from the perspective of nonlinear,identifies the corresponding inflection point when the emission reduction effect brought by the development of digital economy appears and tests the important influence channels of emission reduction.It has not only enriched the relevant research content on the impact of digital economy on carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Delta,but also ushered in new opportunities for the low-carbon development of 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta.