Impact of digital economy on urban land green use efficiency: evidence from Chinese cities

Improving urban land green use efficiency (ULGUE) is essential for achieving the sustainable use of land resources and the high-quality economic development of cities. The digital economy has overcome spatial and locational constraints, blurred the boundaries between industries, and created a collaborative and open economic model, inevitably affecting urban land utilization. However, whether the digital economy will affect ULGUE and how such an effect would take place are still unclear. This study evaluates the digital economy and ULGUE of Chinese cities from 2011 to 2019 and systematically analyzes both the direct and indirect impact mechanisms through which the digital economy affects ULGUE. The results show that the digital economy can significantly enhance ULGUE, and these results prove to be reliable, as shown by various endogeneity treatments and robustness tests. The digital economy enhances ULGUE by optimizing the industrial structure (structural effect), increasing green technology innovation (technical effect), and agglomerating digital talent (scale effect). Moreover, land finance dependency plays an adverse moderating role in the relationship between the digital economy and ULGUE. Further heterogeneity analysis shows that the promoting effect of the digital economy on ULGUE takes full effect in the eastern cities, larger cities, and cities with high levels of digital economy development and land marketization. This paper presents recommendations for supporting the balanced and integrated development of the digital economy across regions and provides differentiated development strategies to enhance ULGUE in the context of digitization.