The effect of information technology on environmental pollution in China

Environmental pollution has become a common topic in the world. The existing literature rarely studies the relationship between information technology and environmental pollution from a spatial perspective. This paper uses spatial econometric models and the panel data of 285 cities in China from 2003 to 2016 to study the effect of information technology on environmental pollution. The results of spatial auto-correlation analysis show that there is a significant positive spatial auto-correlation between information technology and environmental pollution, and the spatial path dependence characteristics are obvious. The estimation results of the spatial econometric models show that information technology has significantly aggravated environmental pollution, and the rebound effect of information technology on environmental pollution has played a leading role, indicating that the policy effect of China using information technology to improve the environment quality is not obvious.