Internet Development and Environmental Quality—Evidence from the Development of Chinese Cities

Based on the data of the 283 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2018, this paper examines the impact of Internet development on environmental quality. The results show that China’s urban PM2.5 has a significant spatial spillover effect. In general, the Internet has a significant negative direct effect on urban environmental pollution, which means that the development of the Internet can improve urban environmental quality. This result remains robust under different methods. As the Internet has evolved over the years, its influence on environmental quality has increased and became more and more significant. In terms of regions, the spatial spillover effect of PM2.5 shows a pattern of eastern region < central region < western region < northeast region, where the eastern region is the only region with a statistically significant negative value for the coefficient, which indicates the direct effects of Internet development on the environmental quality. In addition, the statistic testing on mediating effect shows that the Internet’s effect on urban environment quality is mainly transmitted through the upgrading of industrial structure. With the industrial structure being used as the threshold variable, the influence of Internet development on environmental quality could be divided into two stages.