Research On The Effect Of Digital Economy Development On Urban Carbon Emission

Since the reform and opening up,China’s rise and development has greatly improved people’s living standards and enhanced its international status.However,it has also caused such drawbacks as resource depletion and environmental degradation,especially the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide emissions,which has seriously hindered China’s high-quality development process.In response,China has put forward the strategic goal of "carbon peak" and "carbon neutrality" in order to achieve low-carbon,green and sustainable social development.As a pioneer of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation,digital economy is showing full vitality in an emerging economic form and becoming an important starting point for realizing the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals.Therefore,it is of great practical significance to explore the relationship between digital economy and carbon emission.Based on the "technology-economy" paradigm,network effects,environmental Kuznets,new economic geography and other theories,this thesis takes 285 cities at prefecture level and above in China from 2011 to 2019 as research objects,and uses entropy method and emission factor method to calculate the development level of digital economy and carbon emissions respectively.In addition,quantitative models such as fixed effect panel model,intermediary effect model,threshold panel model and spatial Dubin model are constructed to systematically examine the effect direction,internal mechanism,nonlinear influence,heterogeneity and spatial spillover effect of digital economy development on carbon emissions.Finally,with the pilot cities of "Broadband China" as exogenous policy impact,the multi-period DID model was used to further consolidate the reliability of the core conclusions.The results show that:(1)Digital economy development and urban carbon emissions have significant differences in temporal and spatial evolution,digital economy development from east to west,from coastal to inland trend of decline;The geographical distribution of carbon emission was high in the north and low in the south along the Qinling Mountains and Huaihe River.(2)The development of digital economy can significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions.This conclusion is still valid after robustness test using instrumental variable estimation and other methods.(3)Mechanism analysis shows that green technology innovation and industrial structure optimization are important mechanisms for digital economy to achieve energy conservation and carbon reduction.(4)Heterogeneity analysis showed that the digital economy had a greater effect on emission reduction in the eastern region in terms of geographical location.At the city level,digital economy has a higher marginal emission reduction effect on less developed cities.In terms of resource endowment,digital economy has a stronger inhibition effect on carbon emission of nonresource-based cities.At the marketization level,digital economy has a greater impact on cities with high marketization level.(5)There is an inverted U-shaped curve between the development of digital economy and carbon emissions,which firstly promotes and then inhibits.The panel threshold model finds that digital economy has a single threshold effect,and its impact on carbon emissions presents a nonlinear feature of first increasing and then decreasing.(6)The analysis of spatial model shows that digital economy has spatial spillover effect on carbon emissions,which is different under different spatial weight matrices.In order to implement the top-level design of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals and realize the coordinated development of digital economy and carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals,this thesis puts forward the following policy suggestions: First,continue to promote the construction of digital infrastructure and realize the deep integration of digital economy and traditional industries;Secondly,make clear the focus of the development of digital economy,and rationally arrange the laying of digital infrastructure;Third,speed up the improvement of the top-level design of digital economy and build a new pattern of market integration and coordinated regional green development.Finally,a modern regulatory system for the digital economy should be established to stimulate the innovation potential of enterprises and the vitality of the carbon trading market.