Impact of Digital Technology Application on the Development of Low-Carbon Economic Transition: The Mediating Role of Green Investment

Against the backdrop of in-depth integration between the digital economy and green low-carbon development, exploring how digital technologies facilitate the systematic low-carbon transition of economy and society bears profound theoretical and practical implications for accomplishing China’s “Dual Carbon” goals. Based on provincial-level panel data covering 31 Chinese provinces over the period from 2015 to 2024, this paper adopts two-way fixed-effect specification, instrumental variable approach and Bootstrap-based mediation test to empirically identify the causal impact, underlying mechanisms and heterogeneous boundary conditions of digital technology adoption on low-carbon economic transition. The empirical results demonstrate three core findings. First, digital technology applications exert a statistically significant positive effect on low-carbon economic transition, and this benchmark result remains robust after a battery of robustness tests and endogenous bias corrections. Second, the mechanism estimation uncovers a sophisticated transmission pathway: digital technologies directly accelerate low-carbon transition, yet generate an adverse indirect impact via the green investment channel, which jointly forms a suppressing effect in the mediation framework. Third, the enabling effect of digital technologies on decarbonization presents striking regional imbalance, with significant promotional effects concentrated exclusively in eastern provinces and regions featuring well-developed marketization, which highlights the indispensable moderating role of regional endowments and institutional environments. This study contributes novel empirical evidence to unpack the intricate nexus between digital advancement and green transition, and delivers actionable policy references for designing differentiated and coordinated strategies to integrate digital upgrading with low-carbon development.