Digital economy, market segmentation and carbon emission performance

The development of the digital economy has promoted a new round of technological innovation and industrial transformation, in the era of the digital economy, can the rapidly developing digital economy promote carbon reduction? Based on the panel data of Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2019, this study calculated the digital economy index and total factor carbon emission performance in China. This study also constructed a spatial Durbin model and a mediation effect model to explore the mechanism and impact of the digital economy on carbon emission performance. The results show that: (1) The digital economy significantly promotes the improvement of carbon emission performance, and this conclusion still holds true after using instrumental variables and robustness tests. (2) The impact of the digital economy on carbon emission performance has spatial spillover effects. (3) The impact of the digital economy on carbon emission performance has regional heterogeneity, and the digital economy in the eastern china has a greater promoting effect on carbon emission performance. (4) Mechanism analysis shows that the digital economy can suppress market segmentation, thereby promoting the improvement of carbon emission performance. The above research results provide policymakers with a large amount of empirical evidence on how to better guide the development of the digital economy and promote market integration. Also, the development of the digital economy has played an important role in promoting carbon reduction.