Digital empowerment to reduce air pollution: The impact of urban network infrastructure construction on PM2.5

The digital economy, characterized by its focus on network infrastructure, has the potential to overcome temporal and spatial limitations, thereby enhancing air pollution governance. This paper employs the Broadband China Pilot (BCP) policy, a representative digital economy policy, as a quasi-natural experiment to evaluate its impact on PM2.5 and to explore underlying mechanisms. The findings reveal that: (1) the BCP policy significantly decreases PM2.5; (2) the reduction in haze attributed to the BCP policy is driven by the scale effect, structure effect, and technology effect; (3) the effectiveness of the BCP policy in mitigating haze is particularly pronounced in southern regions and cities with high levels of human capital. This policy not only generates environmental benefits but also enhances social welfare. Furthermore, cities that implement both the BCP policy and the carbon reduction policy, or the BCP policy and the innovation policy, experience a synergistic effect in reducing haze.