The emerging driving force of green transformation in resource-based cities: Does the digital economy work?

Abstract

The green transformation is an investment by resource-based cities (RBCs) in their future development potential, with the rise of digital economy offering a new pathway to facilitate this investment. Based on panel data of 115 Chinese RBCs from 2011 to 2020, this paper quantifies green transformation efficiency (GTE) with a non-radial directional distance function (NDDF) and empirically examines the influence and mechanisms of the Big Data Comprehensive Pilot Areas (BDCPA) policy on the GTE of RBCs using a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) model. The results showed the following. (1) BDCPA significantly enhances the GTE of Chinese RBCs, confirming the vital role of digital economy in expediting their green transformation. (2) The impact of BDCPA on energy conservation and emissions reduction outweighs its influence on economic growth. Both growing and declining RBCs show a greater increase in GTE during BDCPA implementation. (3) Mechanism analysis indicates that BDCPA improves GTE primarily by promoting manufacturing upgrading, mitigating distortions in factor markets and improving the informatization level. Additionally, this paper employs social network analysis (SNA) to map the spatial correlation network of the digital economy. It unveils, for the first time, that RBCs positioned at the core of digital network have seen a more remarkable improvement effect of green transformation. This paper enriches the empirical evidence of how the digital economy empowers the green transition of RBCs and offers valuable insights for other developing countries seeking to utilize digital tools for achieving urban sustainability.