The impact and mechanism of carbon-biased technological advancement on regional sustainable development

Presently, the sustainable transformation of economies and societies is among the most crucial global issues. Thus, it is important to study the actual effects of technological-development trends on sustainable development (SD) and the role of channels. This study examines the factor-biased technical-advancement index of 30 Chinese provinces from 2010 to 2021 by adding labor, capital, and carbon resources to the transcendental logarithmic stochastic-frontier production function. We build a spatial Durbin model. The results are as follows. (1) China’s overall technological advancement in 2010–2021 favors labor use, capital use, and carbon saving, with there being a higher degree of bias toward labor use and carbon savings. (2) Technological advancement in eastern, northeastern, central, and western China has successively transformed from carbon use to carbon saving. (3) Carbon-biased technological advancement has a dual effect on regional SD, and the balance between these two impacts determines the overall effect of the SD level. (4) Technological advancements that favor labor and carbon can promote regional SD by elevating human capital, but technological advancements favored capital and carbon can increase energy intensity and obstruct SD. (5) The influence of biased technological advancement on SD is positively moderated by environmental regulation, but there are negative spatial spillovers. Thus, it is urgent to formulate differentiated policies on low-carbon technological advancement, increase the training and incentives for green innovation, and revise reasonable energy-saving and environmental-protection regulations to achieve a solid blueprint for SD.