{"title":"Carbon co-benefits of digital economy and green finance: empirical evidence from China.","authors":"Yayun Ren, Xiaohang Xu, Yantuan Yu, Zhenhua Zhang","doi":"10.1186/s13021-025-00311-6","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Addressing the carbon co-benefits of policy tools requires simultaneous improvements in both the quantity and quality of carbon abatement to achieve long-term sustainability and equity. Driven by digital technologies and bolstered by green capital, the combination of the digital economy and green finance (DEGF) establishes an effective mechanism for attaining sustainable development goals. Treating the coordinated implementation of the National Big Data Comprehensive Pilot Zones (NBDCPZ) and Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zones (GFRIPZ) policies in China as a quasi-natural experiment, we identify the carbon co-benefits of DEGF using the Synthetic Control Method with penalized regression technique. Empirical findings show that DEGF significantly promotes simultaneous improvements in both the quantity and quality of carbon mitigation. These findings are robust across various validation tests, including time-placebo test, alternative model specification, and double machine learning algorithms. According to mechanisms analysis, improving green technological innovation and human capital level are the main channels that DEGF produces carbon co-benefits. The study provides China and other emerging economies seeking to promote sustainable development through digital-green integration with policy-relevant implications.</p>","PeriodicalId":505,"journal":{"name":"Carbon Balance and Management","volume":"20 1","pages":"22"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Carbon Balance and Management","FirstCategoryId":"89","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s13021-025-00311-6","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Addressing the carbon co-benefits of policy tools requires simultaneous improvements in both the quantity and quality of carbon abatement to achieve long-term sustainability and equity. Driven by digital technologies and bolstered by green capital, the combination of the digital economy and green finance (DEGF) establishes an effective mechanism for attaining sustainable development goals. Treating the coordinated implementation of the National Big Data Comprehensive Pilot Zones (NBDCPZ) and Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zones (GFRIPZ) policies in China as a quasi-natural experiment, we identify the carbon co-benefits of DEGF using the Synthetic Control Method with penalized regression technique. Empirical findings show that DEGF significantly promotes simultaneous improvements in both the quantity and quality of carbon mitigation. These findings are robust across various validation tests, including time-placebo test, alternative model specification, and double machine learning algorithms. According to mechanisms analysis, improving green technological innovation and human capital level are the main channels that DEGF produces carbon co-benefits. The study provides China and other emerging economies seeking to promote sustainable development through digital-green integration with policy-relevant implications.
期刊介绍:
Carbon Balance and Management is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that encompasses all aspects of research aimed at developing a comprehensive policy relevant to the understanding of the global carbon cycle.
The global carbon cycle involves important couplings between climate, atmospheric CO2 and the terrestrial and oceanic biospheres. The current transformation of the carbon cycle due to changes in climate and atmospheric composition is widely recognized as potentially dangerous for the biosphere and for the well-being of humankind, and therefore monitoring, understanding and predicting the evolution of the carbon cycle in the context of the whole biosphere (both terrestrial and marine) is a challenge to the scientific community.
This demands interdisciplinary research and new approaches for studying geographical and temporal distributions of carbon pools and fluxes, control and feedback mechanisms of the carbon-climate system, points of intervention and windows of opportunity for managing the carbon-climate-human system.
Carbon Balance and Management is a medium for researchers in the field to convey the results of their research across disciplinary boundaries. Through this dissemination of research, the journal aims to support the work of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and to provide governmental and non-governmental organizations with instantaneous access to continually emerging knowledge, including paradigm shifts and consensual views.