Impact of domestic digital services trade barriers on their export efficiency: Empirical evidence from the “Digital Silk Road”

Research has focused on the negative effects of digital services trade barriers on the welfare of importing countries or the market access of foreign exporters. However, whether a country's own digital services trade barriers generate appropriate protection or lead to efficiency losses in their own export of digital services remains an open question. Using the input–output data of 56 countries along the “Belt and Road” from 2014 to 2021, the study investigates the mechanism through which a country's trade barriers affect their own export efficiency of digital services. Results show that digital services trade barriers imposed by the exporting country significantly inhibit their own export efficiency, producing a “backfire effect”—that is, protectionist measures ultimately harm the domestic digital services exports which are meant to safeguard. The efficiency loss in developing countries is significantly higher than that in developed countries, and the Asian region suffers the most. The Digital Silk Road initiative alleviates the negative impact of trade barriers and reduces the efficiency loss. Heterogeneity analysis reveals the strongest negative effects of regulatory restrictions in the field of electronic transactions. Mechanism analysis indicates that trade barriers weaken the export efficiency of digital services primarily by suppressing the synergy of labor and capital with data factors and delaying the construction of digital infrastructure. Furthermore, this study reveals the self-defeating logic of unilateral digital services trade barriers and provides empirical evidence for balancing protection and openness in global digital trade governance and optimizing regional cooperation mechanisms.