IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v15y2023i3p2260-d1046907.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can the Growth of the Digital Economy Be Beneficial for Urban Decarbonization? A Study from Chinese Cities

Author

Listed:
  • Zhichun Yu

    (Department of International Economics and Trade, School of Political Science and Economics, Kyunghee University, Seoul 02447, Republic of Korea)

  • Yanjiao Wan

    (Department of Commercial Law, School of Law, Kyunghee University, Seoul 02447, Republic of Korea)

Abstract

An environmentally friendly city is a livable home for the future. Can the rapidly developing digital economy help decrease carbon emissions and realize a low-carbon and clean city promptly? This study focuses on examining how multi-dimensional digital economic growth has influenced CO 2 emissions across 280 Chinese cities from 2011 to 2019. Findings discover that (1) An “n”-type curve nexus exists between CO 2 emissions and the digital economy in Chinese cities, which means that digital economy expansion initially strengthens CO 2 emissions, but at a certain level, it can help achieve the target of urban decarbonization; (2) The digital economy’s influence on CO 2 emissions is spatially spilled and regionally heterogeneous, and by means of economies of scale and industrial composition upgrades, it can help the city to lower carbon emissions and benefit the low carbonization of neighboring cities. However, based on the “rebound effect”, the intermediary role of technological effects in reducing emissions in the short term is not apparent; (3) The expansion of trade openness and appropriately stringent environmental rules in line with national conditions are beneficial to lower CO 2 emissions in the city and the surrounding cities in the short term. It is recommended that policy makers actively promote the development of the digital economy, strengthen exchanges and cooperation between cities, narrow the gap between cities, and actively learn the advanced management concepts of surrounding cities through the development of economies of scale and industrial structure transformation to accomplish the target of “carbon neutrality” sooner rather than later.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhichun Yu & Yanjiao Wan, 2023. "Can the Growth of the Digital Economy Be Beneficial for Urban Decarbonization? A Study from Chinese Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-21, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:3:p:2260-:d:1046907
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2260/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2260/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Koopman & Zhi Wang & Shang-Jin Wei, 2014. "Tracing Value-Added and Double Counting in Gross Exports," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(2), pages 459-494, February.
    2. Yu, Nannan & de Jong, Martin & Storm, Servaas & Mi, Jianing, 2013. "Spatial spillover effects of transport infrastructure: evidence from Chinese regions," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 56-66.
    3. Gene M. Grossman & Alan B. Krueger, 1995. "Economic Growth and the Environment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(2), pages 353-377.
    4. Peter Gomber & Jascha-Alexander Koch & Michael Siering, 2017. "Digital Finance and FinTech: current research and future research directions," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(5), pages 537-580, July.
    5. Li, Zhiguo & Wang, Jie, 2022. "Spatial spillover effect of carbon emission trading on carbon emission reduction: Empirical data from pilot regions in China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 251(C).
    6. J. Paul Elhorst, 2014. "Spatial Panel Data Models," SpringerBriefs in Regional Science, in: Spatial Econometrics, edition 127, chapter 0, pages 37-93, Springer.
    7. Ke, Jing & Zheng, Nina & Fridley, David & Price, Lynn & Zhou, Nan, 2012. "Potential energy savings and CO2 emissions reduction of China's cement industry," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 739-751.
    8. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Gozgor, Giray & Adom, Philip Kofi & Hammoudeh, Shawkat, 2019. "The technical decomposition of carbon emissions and the concerns about FDI and trade openness effects in the United States," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 56-73.
    9. Peterson K. Ozili, 2018. "Impact of digital finance on financial inclusion and stability," Borsa Istanbul Review, Research and Business Development Department, Borsa Istanbul, vol. 18(4), pages 329-340, December.
    10. Eskeland, Gunnar S. & Harrison, Ann E., 2003. "Moving to greener pastures? Multinationals and the pollution haven hypothesis," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 1-23, February.
    11. Le, Thai-Ha & Le, Ha-Chi & Taghizadeh-Hesary, Farhad, 2020. "Does financial inclusion impact CO2 emissions? Evidence from Asia," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 34(C).
    12. Zhao, Jun & Jiang, Qingzhe & Dong, Xiucheng & Dong, Kangyin, 2021. "Assessing energy poverty and its effect on CO2 emissions: The case of China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    13. Zhang, Yue-Jun & Peng, Yu-Lu & Ma, Chao-Qun & Shen, Bo, 2017. "Can environmental innovation facilitate carbon emissions reduction? Evidence from China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 18-28.
    14. Xie, Rui & Wei, Dihan & Han, Feng & Lu, Yue & Fang, Jiayu & Liu, Yu & Wang, Junfeng, 2019. "The effect of traffic density on smog pollution: Evidence from Chinese cities," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 421-427.
    15. Ozili, Peterson Kitakogelu, 2018. "Impact of Digital Finance on Financial Inclusion and Stability," MPRA Paper 84771, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Levinson, Arik, 1996. "Environmental regulations and manufacturers' location choices: Evidence from the Census of Manufactures," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1-2), pages 5-29, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhuoqi Teng & Yugang He & Zhi Qiao, 2023. "Exploring the Synergistic Effects of Digitalization and Economic Uncertainty on Environmental Sustainability: An Investigation from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(15), pages 1-24, August.
    2. Zhong Ren & Jie Zhang, 2023. "Digital Economy, Clean Energy Consumption, and High-Quality Economic Development: The Case of China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(18), pages 1-24, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Song, Quanyun & Li, Jie & Wu, Yu & Yin, Zhichao, 2020. "Accessibility of financial services and household consumption in China: Evidence from micro data," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    2. Gallego-Losada, María-Jesús & Montero-Navarro, Antonio & García-Abajo, Elisa & Gallego-Losada, Rocío, 2023. "Digital financial inclusion. Visualizing the academic literature," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    3. Huang, Guobin & Zhang, Jie & Yu, Jian & Shi, Xunpeng, 2020. "Impact of transportation infrastructure on industrial pollution in Chinese cities: A spatial econometric analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    4. Ren, Xiaohang & Zeng, Gudian & Zhao, Yang, 2023. "Digital finance and corporate ESG performance: Empirical evidence from listed companies in China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    5. Xiuxiu Jiang & Xia Wang & Jia Ren & Zhimin Xie, 2023. "Digital economy, agglomeration, and entrepreneurship in Chinese cities," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(1), pages 359-370, January.
    6. Baptiste Venet, 2019. "Fintech and Financial Inclusion," Post-Print hal-02294648, HAL.
    7. Liu, Dan & Jin, Yanhong & Pray, Carl & Liu, Shuang, 2020. "The Effects of Digital Inclusive Finance on Household Income and Income Inequality in China?," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304238, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    8. Valeria Vannoni, 2020. "Financing Italian Firms Throught Invoice Trading Platforms," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 12(3), pages 1-78, March.
    9. Badeeb, Ramez Abubakr & Wang, Bo & Zhao, Jun & Khan, Zeeshan & Uktamov, Khusniddin Fakhriddinovich & Zhang, Changyong, 2023. "Natural resources extraction and financial inclusion: Linear and non-linear effect of natural resources on financial sector," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(PA).
    10. Francisco Jesús Gálvez-Sánchez & Juan Lara-Rubio & Antonio José Verdú-Jóver & Víctor Meseguer-Sánchez, 2021. "Research Advances on Financial Inclusion: A Bibliometric Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-19, March.
    11. Jiayi Li & Shujun Ye & Shujuan Wang, 2023. "Spatial Network Analysis on the Coupling Coordination of Digital Finance and Technological Innovation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-22, April.
    12. Ayse M. Erdogan, 2014. "Foreign Direct Investment And Environmental Regulations: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 943-955, December.
    13. Chang Zhao & Bing Wang, 2021. "Does China’s Low-Carbon Pilot Policy Promote Foreign Direct Investment? An Empirical Study Based on City-Level Panel Data of China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-21, September.
    14. Ozili, Peterson K, 2022. "Embedded finance: assessing the benefits, use case, challenges and interest over time," MPRA Paper 115775, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Murshed, Muntasir & Ahmed, Rizwan & Al-Tal, Raad Mahmoud & Kumpamool, Chamaiporn & Vetchagool, Witchulada & Avarado, Rafael, 2023. "Determinants of financial inclusion in South Asia: The moderating and mediating roles of internal conflict settlement," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    16. Dinda, Soumyananda, 2004. "Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: A Survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 431-455, August.
    17. Minli Yu & Fu-Sheng Tsai & Hui Jin & Hejie Zhang, 2022. "Digital finance and renewable energy consumption: evidence from China," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 1-19, December.
    18. Gong, Zhonghang & Wu, Yuqin & Tawiah, Vincent & Abdulrasheed, Zakari, 2023. "The environmental footprint of international business in Africa; The role of natural resources," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    19. Liming Yang & Yanxia Chen & Xiuju Gao, 2023. "Spatial Spillover Effect of Digital-Finance-Driven Technology Innovation Level Based on BP Neural Network," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-14, January.
    20. David Mhlanga, 2020. "Industry 4.0 in Finance: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Digital Financial Inclusion," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-14, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:3:p:2260-:d:1046907. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.