Journal
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND POLLUTION RESEARCH
Volume 29, Issue 7, Pages 9990-10004Publisher
SPRINGER HEIDELBERG
DOI: 10.1007/s11356-021-16381-1
Keywords
Internet development; Green economic growth; Industrial structure upgrading; Environmental pollution; Corporate innovation; Regional heterogeneity
Categories
Funding
- Project of Natural Science Foundation of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region [2017D01C071]
- key scientific research projects of universities in Xinjiang [XJEDU2019SI003]
- graduate research and innovation project of Xinjiang University [XJ2019G005, XJ2020G020, XJ2021G013, XJ2021G014]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This study investigates the impact mechanisms of internet development on green economic growth in prefecture-level cities in China using a mixed model. The findings show that internet development significantly contributes to green economic growth, with regional heterogeneity observed where the promoting effect of internet development on green economic growth increases gradually from the eastern region to the western region.
As the digital economy develops rapidly and the network information technology advances, new development models represented by the network economy have emerged, which have a crucial impact on green economic growth. However, the relevant previous studies lacked the role of analyzing the direct and indirect effects of internet development on green economic growth at the prefecture-level city level. For this purpose, this paper aims to examine the intrinsic mechanism of the impact of internet development on green economic growth and provide empirical support for cities and regions in China to increase internet construction. Furthermore, the mixed model (EBM), which includes both radial and non-radial distance functions, is applied to calculate the green economic growth index. Fixed effect model and mediation effect model are also employed to test influence mechanisms of the internet development on green economic growth using panel data of 269 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2019. The statistical results reveal that internet development has contributed significantly to green economic growth. When the internet development level increases by 1 unit, the green economic growth level increases by an average of 5.0372 units. However, regional heterogeneity is evident between internet development and green economic growth, that is, the promoting effect of internet development on green economic growth is gradually enhanced from the eastern region to the western region. We also find that internet development guides industrial structure upgrading improves environmental quality and accelerates enterprise innovation, which indirectly contributes to green economic growth. And internet development mainly achieves green economic growth through enterprise innovation. Based on the above findings, we concluded that policymakers should not only strengthen the guiding role of social actors to promote the stable development of the internet industry, but also foster the construction of the three models of internet+industry integration, internet+environmental governance, and internet+enterprise innovation to promote green economic growth.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available