The digital path to carbon neutrality: Examining the carbon abatement effect of digital place-based policy in China

Digital place-based policy takes data elements as the core and promotes the transformation of the regional economy from traditional mode to digitalization and intelligence through the construction of digital infrastructure, digital technology applications and digital industries. This paper takes China’s digital economy innovation and development pilot zone (DEIDPZ) policy, a typical digital place-based policy, as the research object, and utilizes the panel data of 281 cities in China from 2015 to 2021 to study the carbon abatement effect of the digital place-based policy by using a difference-in-differences (DID) model. We find that the DEIDPZ policy has a significant carbon abatement effect, resulting in a 2.69% reduction in per capita CO₂ emissions for the pilot cities. Mechanism analysis reveals that allocation, technical and agglomeration effects are the main mediators of the DEIDPZ policy in facilitating carbon abatement. It is also demonstrated that digital finance and public environmental attention play moderating roles in the process of the DEIDPZ policy reducing CO₂. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the carbon abatement effect of DEIDPZ policy is more significant in eastern cities, resource-based cities, cities with high administrative levels, and cities with high economic development levels, as well as in Zhejiang Province and Guangdong Province. Our findings offer new insights into the sustainability impact of digital transformation, as well as inspire policy-makers to use digital place-based policy to achieve carbon neutrality targets.