IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eneeco/v148y2025ics014098832500516x.html

How to enhance China's total-factor energy efficiency via digital-real economy integration: New evidence from dynamic QCA analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Zhong, Kaijun
  • Lei, Yalin
  • Zhao, Jun
  • Jiang, Yong

Abstract

In response to global climate challenges and China's regional energy efficiency disparities, this study identifies how digital-real economy integration (DRI) enhances total-factor energy efficiency (TFEE) through a novel dynamic qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of 30 Chinese provinces (2012−2022). The findings reveal three key conclusions. First, while no single condition is strictly necessary for achieving high TFEE, the importance of digital infrastructure and digital finance has increased significantly. Digital infrastructure enhances energy efficiency by optimizing resource allocation and promoting industrial synergy, whereas digital finance contributes through green credit and capital optimization. Second, three primary DRI pathways for improving TFEE are identified: the digital industry-driven pattern, for regions with strong digital foundations but insufficient industrial agglomeration; the industrial synergy optimization pattern, for developed eastern regions; and the technology–capital–space interaction pattern, for areas with advanced green finance and concentrated industries. Third, Kruskal–Wallis rank–sum tests reveal that regional structural differences strongly influence digitalization and TFEE. Eastern regions lead due to policy support, resource allocation, industrial modernization, and talent advantages, whereas central and western regions face challenges such as weaker infrastructure, limited policy support, and slower digital transformation, resulting in unbalanced regional development.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhong, Kaijun & Lei, Yalin & Zhao, Jun & Jiang, Yong, 2025. "How to enhance China's total-factor energy efficiency via digital-real economy integration: New evidence from dynamic QCA analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:148:y:2025:i:c:s014098832500516x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108689
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014098832500516X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108689?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Xin, Yongrong & Song, Hang & Shen, Zhiyang & Wang, Jiangquan, 2023. "Measurement of the integration level between the digital economy and industry and its impact on energy consumption," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    2. Yating Zeng & Xinyue Xu & Yuyao Zhao & Bin Li, 2023. "Impact of Digital Economy on the Upgrading of Energy Consumption Structure: Evidence from Mainland China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-18, March.
    3. Sun, Guanglin & Yin, Ding & Kong, Tao & Yin, Lei, 2024. "The impact of the integration of the digital economy and the real economy on the risk of stock price collapse," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    4. Sun, Guanglin & Fang, Jiming & Li, Jinning & Wang, Xiaolin, 2024. "Research on the impact of the integration of digital economy and real economy on enterprise green innovation," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    5. Xu, Ru-Yu & Wang, Ke-Liang & Miao, Zhuang, 2024. "The impact of digital technology innovation on green total-factor energy efficiency in China: Does economic development matter?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    6. Dong-hyun Oh, 2010. "A global Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 183-197, December.
    7. Ren, Siyu & Hao, Yu & Wu, Haitao, 2022. "The role of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) on green total factor energy efficiency: Does institutional quality matters? Evidence from China," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    8. Chuanyue Zhao & Zhishuang Zhu & Yujuan Wang & Junhong Du, 2024. "The Impact of Industrial Robots on Green Total Factor Energy Efficiency: Empirical Evidence from Chinese Cities," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(20), pages 1-24, October.
    9. Kai Chen & Feng Guo & Shuang Xu, 2022. "The Impact of Digital Economy Agglomeration on Regional Green Total Factor Productivity Disparity: Evidence from 285 Cities in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-16, November.
    10. Wang, Jianda & Dong, Xiucheng & Dong, Kangyin, 2022. "How does ICT agglomeration affect carbon emissions? The case of Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    11. Senhua Huang & Lingming Chen, 2023. "The Impact of the Digital Economy on the Urban Total-Factor Energy Efficiency: Evidence from 275 Cities in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-20, February.
    12. Ya Wu & Yin Liu & Minglong Zhang, 2023. "How Does Digital Finance Affect Energy Efficiency?—Characteristics, Mechanisms, and Spatial Effects," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-24, April.
    13. Zhou, Xiaoxiao & Cai, Ziming & Tan, Kim Hua & Zhang, Linling & Du, Juntao & Song, Malin, 2021. "Technological innovation and structural change for economic development in China as an emerging market," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    14. Hao, Yu & Gai, Zhiqiang & Wu, Haitao, 2020. "How do resource misallocation and government corruption affect green total factor energy efficiency? Evidence from China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    15. Bao Bing, 2023. "The impact of higher education on high quality economic development in China: A digital perspective," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(8), pages 1-17, August.
    16. Navarro, Susana & Llinares, Carmen & Garzon, Dolores, 2016. "Exploring the relationship between co-creation and satisfaction using QCA," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(4), pages 1336-1339.
    17. Zeng, Guohua & Wu, Mengmeng & Yuan, Xinxin, 2024. "Digital economy and industrial agglomeration," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 475-498.
    18. Peng, Hui & Lu, Yaobin & Wang, Qunwei, 2023. "How does heterogeneous industrial agglomeration affect the total factor energy efficiency of China's digital economy," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    19. Bent Erik Bakken, 2019. "Energy transition dynamics: Does participatory modelling contribute to alignment among differing future world views?," Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(2), pages 184-196, March.
    20. Lu, Juan & Li, He, 2024. "Can digital technology innovation promote total factor energy efficiency? Firm-level evidence from China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 293(C).
    21. Bie, Fan & Zhou, Luyao & Liu, Shuo & Yang, Tao, 2024. "Government digital transformation, resource curse and green total factor energy efficiency in Chinese cities," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    22. Pappas, Ilias O. & Woodside, Arch G., 2021. "Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA): Guidelines for research practice in Information Systems and marketing," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    23. Gao, Jiwen & Li, Hao & Zhang, Didi, 2025. "Exploring the mechanisms and regional variations in how digital financial inclusion drives high-quality real economic development across China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    24. Zhang, Weike & Fan, Hongxia & Zhao, Qiwei, 2023. "Seeing green: How does digital infrastructure affect carbon emission intensity?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(PB).
    25. Tone, Kaoru, 2002. "A slacks-based measure of super-efficiency in data envelopment analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 32-41, November.
    26. Wu, Haitao & Hao, Yu & Ren, Siyu, 2020. "How do environmental regulation and environmental decentralization affect green total factor energy efficiency: Evidence from China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    27. Caves, Douglas W & Christensen, Laurits R & Diewert, W Erwin, 1982. "The Economic Theory of Index Numbers and the Measurement of Input, Output, and Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1393-1414, November.
    28. Hu, Jin-Li & Wang, Shih-Chuan, 2006. "Total-factor energy efficiency of regions in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(17), pages 3206-3217, November.
    29. Lisi Tan & Zhuodong Yang & Muhammad Irfan & Chante Jian Ding & Mingjun Hu & Jin Hu, 2024. "Toward low‐carbon sustainable development: Exploring the impact of digital economy development and industrial restructuring," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 2159-2172, March.
    30. Tingliang Huang & Jan A. Van Mieghem, 2014. "Clickstream Data and Inventory Management: Model and Empirical Analysis," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 23(3), pages 333-347, March.
    31. Peneder, Michael, 2003. "Industrial structure and aggregate growth," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 427-448, December.
    32. Staffan Jacobsson & Anna Bergek, 2004. "Transforming the energy sector: the evolution of technological systems in renewable energy technology," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 13(5), pages 815-849, October.
    33. 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.
    34. Qin, Quande & Yu, Ying & Liu, Yuan & Zhou, Jianqing & Chen, Xiude, 2023. "Industrial agglomeration and energy efficiency: A new perspective from market integration," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    35. Cheng, Zhonghua & Liu, Jun & Li, Lianshui & Gu, Xinbei, 2020. "Research on meta-frontier total-factor energy efficiency and its spatial convergence in Chinese provinces," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    36. Tone, Kaoru, 2001. "A slacks-based measure of efficiency in data envelopment analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 130(3), pages 498-509, May.
    37. Dong, Feng & Li, Yangfan & Li, Kun & Zhu, Jiao & Zheng, Lu, 2022. "Can smart city construction improve urban ecological total factor energy efficiency in China? Fresh evidence from generalized synthetic control method," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    38. Aigner, Dennis & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Peter, 1977. "Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 21-37, July.
    39. Lin, Han & Peng, Pin, 2025. "Impacts of Digital Inclusive Finance, Human Capital and Digital Economy on Rural Development in Developing Countries," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    40. Xiaonan Fan & Sainan Ren & Yang Liu, 2023. "The Driving Factors of Green Technology Innovation Efficiency—A Study Based on the Dynamic QCA Method," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-25, June.
    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. Hongna Tian & Yueru Lu & Huan Liu & Jingtao Chen, 2026. "Hacking the resilience code: How digital intelligence improves manufacturing industry resilience?," Operations Management Research, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 1-28, March.
    2. Cui, Linyu & Wang, Bangjun & Wang, Yue, 2025. "Homogeneity or heterogeneity? research on convergence of renewable energy consumption and driven pathways for configuration effect - evidence from the BRICS+ countries," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 338(C).

    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. Xu, Ru-Yu & Wang, Ke-Liang & Miao, Zhuang, 2024. "Exploring the impact of digital industry agglomeration on provincial energy efficiency in China: A panel data analysis from 2012 to 2020," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 313(C).
    2. Sun, Yu & Yang, Feng & Wang, Dawei & Ang, Sheng, 2023. "Efficiency evaluation for higher education institutions in China considering unbalanced regional development: A meta-frontier Super-SBM model," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    3. Wang, Jianda & Guo, Dongsheng, 2023. "Siphon and radiation effects of ICT agglomeration on green total factor productivity: Evidence from a spatial Durbin model," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    4. Jun Liu & Hengxu Shen & Yuexing Li & Tianci Yin, 2025. "Impact of Industrial Symbiotic Agglomeration on Energy Efficiency: Analysis Using Time-Varying Difference-in-Difference Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(5), pages 1-18, February.
    5. Fan, Di & Peng, Bo & Wu, Jianxin & Zhang, ZhongXiang, 2024. "The convergence of total-factor energy efficiency across Chinese cities: A distribution dynamics approach," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 406-416.
    6. Zebin Zheng & Wenjun Xiao & Ziye Cheng, 2023. "China’s Green Total Factor Energy Efficiency Assessment Based on Coordinated Reduction in Pollution and Carbon Emission: From the 11th to the 13th Five-Year Plan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-20, April.
    7. Da Gao & Chang Liu & Xinyan Wei & Yang Liu, 2023. "Can River Chief System Policy Improve Enterprises’ Energy Efficiency? Evidence from China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(4), pages 1-17, February.
    8. Weixiang Zhao & Yankun Xu, 2022. "Public Expenditure and Green Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from Chinese Prefecture-Level Cities," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(9), pages 1-27, May.
    9. Haikuo Zhang & Chaobo Zhou, 2023. "Construction of the Pilot Free Trade Zone and Chinese Green Total Factor Energy Efficiency," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-13, June.
    10. Meng, Ming & Qu, Danlei, 2022. "Understanding the green energy efficiencies of provinces in China: A Super-SBM and GML analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(PA).
    11. Wen, Yuyuan & Yu, Zilong & Xue, Jingjing & Liu, Yang, 2024. "How heterogeneous industrial agglomeration impacts energy efficiency subject to technological innovation:Evidence from the spatial threshold model," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    12. Yuanying Chi & Situo Xu & Xiaolei Yang & Jialin Li & Xufeng Zhang & Yahui Chen, 2023. "Research on Beijing Manufacturing Green-Oriented Transition Path under “Double Carbon” Goal-Based on the GML-SD Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-17, May.
    13. Li, Bo & Han, Yukai & Wang, Chensheng & Sun, Wei, 2022. "Did civilized city policy improve energy efficiency of resource-based cities? Prefecture-level evidence from China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    14. Tao Ma & Xiaoxi Cao, 2022. "FDI, technological progress, and green total factor energy productivity: evidence from 281 prefecture cities in China," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(9), pages 11058-11088, September.
    15. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2015. "Efficiency of the banking system in Vietnam under financial liberalization," OSF Preprints qsf6d, Center for Open Science.
    16. Shuai Wang & Cunyi Yang & Zhenghui Li, 2021. "Spatio-Temporal Evolution Characteristics and Spatial Interaction Spillover Effects of New-Urbanization and Green Land Utilization Efficiency," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-26, October.
    17. Wang, Shiyan & Li, Chengjiang & Zhang, Wei & Sui, Jingyu & Negnevitsky, Michael, 2024. "Assessing the impact of prefabricated buildings on urban green total factor energy efficiency," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 297(C).
    18. Li, Mingquan & Wang, Qi, 2014. "International environmental efficiency differences and their determinants," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 411-420.
    19. Xiong, Yongqing & Cheng, Qian, 2023. "Effects of new energy vehicle adoption on provincial energy efficiency in China: From the perspective of regional imbalances," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 281(C).
    20. Lei, Ming & Yin, Zihan & Yu, Xiaowen & Deng, Shijie, 2017. "Carbon-weighted economic development performance and driving force analysis: Evidence from China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 179-192.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C67 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Input-Output Models
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:eee:eneeco:v:148:y:2025:i:c:s014098832500516x. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eneco .

    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.