How does digital trade development affect carbon emissions? Evidence from China

IF 8.7 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Economic Analysis and Policy Pub Date : 2025-02-06 DOI:10.1016/j.eap.2025.02.004

Mengyang Yang, Yawen Liu, Jingle Wang, Xiaobin Tang

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Abstract

Digital trade development (DTD) contributes to green economic growth across various regions and is crucial in coping with climate change. Using data from China's province-level of 2011–2021, we explore how the regional DTD affects carbon emissions (CE). Results indicate that DTD significantly affects CE with a U-shape in provinces and shows positive spatial spillover effects. Robustness checks validate our findings. Mechanism analyses indicate that DTD affects CE through expanding digital human capital, fostering green technological innovation, and upgrading the industrial structure. Further discussions demonstrate that DTD in eastern and central provinces illustrates notable spillover effects. The eastern region has an inverted U-shape, and the central region is U-shaped. Under the threshold variables of digital human capital, digital finance, and carbon emission intensity, DTD affects CE, revealing clear nonlinear effects. These results support the idea that DTD helps to decrease CE and offers valuable insights into the coordinated development of digitalization and low-carbonization among regions.

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数字贸易发展如何影响碳排放？来自中国的证据

数字贸易发展有助于各地区的绿色经济增长，对应对气候变化至关重要。本文利用2011-2021年中国省级数据，探讨了区域DTD对碳排放的影响。结果表明，有限差分对省际生产效率的影响呈“u”型，呈现正向的空间溢出效应。稳健性检查验证了我们的发现。机制分析表明，DTD通过扩大数字人力资本、促进绿色技术创新和产业结构升级来影响企业绩效。进一步的讨论表明，东部和中部省份的DTD显示出显著的溢出效应。东部地区呈倒u型，中部地区呈u型。在数字人力资本、数字金融、碳排放强度等阈值变量下，DTD影响CE，呈现出明显的非线性效应。这些结果支持了DTD有助于降低碳排放的观点，并为区域间数字化和低碳化的协调发展提供了有价值的见解。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Economic Analysis and Policy ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

9.80

自引率

9.20%

发文量

231

审稿时长

93 days

期刊介绍： Economic Analysis and Policy (established 1970) publishes articles from all branches of economics with a particular focus on research, theoretical and applied, which has strong policy relevance. The journal also publishes survey articles and empirical replications on key policy issues. Authors are expected to highlight the main insights in a non-technical introduction and in the conclusion.