Resource dependence and air pollution in China: Do the digital economy, income inequality, and industrial upgrading matter?

Air pollution has emerged as a substantial threat to China’s sustainable development. What remains overlooked is the resource dependence on the control of air pollution. At the same time, the resource curse may be broken by the growing digital economy, which will in turn reduce air pollution. To examine this problem, a total of 225 Chinese prefecture-level cities were selected from 2011 to 2018 to investigate the associations among resource dependence, the digital economy, and air pollution, and further, explore the mediating effect of income inequality and industrial upgrading. The primary findings are enumerated as follows: First, resource dependence is positively correlated to air pollution; second, the digital economy negatively regulates the effect of resource dependence on air pollution, that is, as the digital economy grows, air pollution decreases via resource dependence as a whole. However, a noteworthy phenomenon is that the negative moderating effect is evidently heterogeneous and is especially prominent in central China and non-resource-based cities; third, income inequality and industrial upgrading play a mediating role between resource dependence and air pollution; fourth, the digital economy can significantly influence the process where resource dependence affects air pollution via income inequality and industrial upgrading. These findings indicate the direction in the development of new strategies for different regions. Alleviating resource dependence is an important way of air pollution control. In particular, the main focus on mitigating air pollution should be adjusted to the level of income inequality and industrial structure. And the empirical results call for a strong emphasis on the digital economy for higher air quality in resource-based cities.