IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/endesu/v27y2025i3d10.1007_s10668-023-04164-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Spatial spillover and threshold effects of digital economy on green innovation efficiency–based on provincial level data in China

Author

Listed:
  • Zhiwei Zhang

    (Anhui University of Science and Technology)

  • Yunhe Cheng

    (Anhui University of Science and Technology)

  • Jin Zhang

    (Anhui University of Science and Technology)

Abstract

“Digitization” and “greening” are important directions for China’s future economic development. As the frontier technology of economy and society, the digital economy plays an important role in promoting green innovation and development through digitization and intelligent transformation to promote the power and efficiency change of the whole society. Using the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2020, the super-efficiency SBM-DEA model and the entropy value method are used to evaluate China’s regional green innovation efficiency and digital economy, respectively. The nonlinear and spatial spillover effects of the digital economy on green innovation efficiency were investigated based on the fixed effect model, threshold effect model, and spatial econometric model. The results show that (1) the digital economy has a facilitating effect on regional green innovation efficiency, and this facilitating effect is regionally heterogeneous. (2) There is a double threshold effect of the digital economy on green innovation efficiency, and the impact of the digital economy on green innovation efficiency has an overall U-shaped trend. (3) Digital economy and green innovation efficiency have a positive correlation in space, and there is an obvious positive spatial spillover effect of digital economy development on green innovation efficiency. Given the above conclusions, China should improve the construction of digital infrastructure, coordinate the development of a regional digital economy, and formulate differentiated digital economy policies to stimulate the vitality of green innovation and promote the improvement of regional green innovation efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhiwei Zhang & Yunhe Cheng & Jin Zhang, 2025. "Spatial spillover and threshold effects of digital economy on green innovation efficiency–based on provincial level data in China," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 6733-6755, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:endesu:v:27:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s10668-023-04164-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s10668-023-04164-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10668-023-04164-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10668-023-04164-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Xiaocheng Huang & Jianjun Zhou & Yake Zhou & Yong Xu, 2022. "Digital Economy’s Spatial Implications on Urban Innovation and Its Threshold: Evidence from China," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2022, pages 1-25, September.
    2. Liang, Lin & Li, Yan, 2023. "How does government support promote digital economy development in China? The mediating role of regional innovation ecosystem resilience," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    3. Wang, Jun & Ghosh, Sudeshna & Olayinka, Olohunlana Aminat & Doğan, Buhari & Shah, Muhammad Ibrahim & Zhong, Kaiyang, 2022. "Achieving energy security amidst the world uncertainty in newly industrialized economies: The role of technological advancement," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 261(PB).
    4. Hansen, Bruce E., 1999. "Threshold effects in non-dynamic panels: Estimation, testing, and inference," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 345-368, December.
    5. Rubashkina, Yana & Galeotti, Marzio & Verdolini, Elena, 2015. "Environmental regulation and competitiveness: Empirical evidence on the Porter Hypothesis from European manufacturing sectors," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 288-300.
    6. Shuaitao Jiao & Qiubi Sun, 2021. "Digital Economic Development and Its Impact on Econimic Growth in China: Research Based on the Prespective of Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-19, September.
    7. Anselin, Luc & Getis, Arthur, 1992. "Spatial Statistical Analysis and Geographic Information Systems," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 26(1), pages 19-33, April.
    8. Li, Shuangyan & Chang, Ge & Zunong, Reyihanguli, 2023. "Does regional digital economy development influence green investment?," Innovation and Green Development, Elsevier, vol. 2(3).
    9. Lingzhang Kong & Jinye Li, 2022. "Digital Economy Development and Green Economic Efficiency: Evidence from Province-Level Empirical Data in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-26, December.
    10. Chenggang Wang & Tiansen Liu & Yue Zhu & Meng Lin & Wenhao Chang & Xinyu Wang & Dongrong Li & He Wang & Jinsol Yoo, 2022. "Digital Economy, Environmental Regulation and Corporate Green Technology Innovation: Evidence from China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(21), pages 1-18, October.
    11. Bin Liao & Lin Li, 2023. "Urban green innovation efficiency and its influential factors: the Chinese evidence," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 25(7), pages 6551-6573, July.
    12. Cem Işık, 2013. "The Importance of Creating a Competitive Advantage and Investing in Information Technology for Modern Economies: an ARDL Test Approach from Turkey," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 4(4), pages 387-405, December.
    13. Lijiang Jia & Xiaoli Hu & Zhongwei Zhao & Bin He & Weiming Liu, 2022. "How Environmental Regulation, Digital Development and Technological Innovation Affect China’s Green Economy Performance: Evidence from Dynamic Thresholds and System GMM Panel Data Approaches," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-25, January.
    14. Jianing Xu & Weidong Li, 2022. "The Impact of the Digital Economy on Innovation: New Evidence from Panel Threshold Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-19, November.
    15. Tone, Kaoru, 2002. "A slacks-based measure of super-efficiency in data envelopment analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 32-41, November.
    16. Miao, Chenglin & Fang, Debin & Sun, Liyan & Luo, Qiaoling, 2017. "Natural resources utilization efficiency under the influence of green technological innovation," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 153-161.
    17. Xie, Rui & Fu, Wei & Yao, Siling & Zhang, Qi, 2021. "Effects of financial agglomeration on green total factor productivity in Chinese cities: Insights from an empirical spatial Durbin model," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yunyan Jiang & Feng Deng, 2022. "Multi-Dimensional Threshold Effects of the Digital Economy on Green Economic Growth?—New Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-22, October.
    2. Wang, Jianda & Guo, Dongsheng, 2023. "Siphon and radiation effects of ICT agglomeration on green total factor productivity: Evidence from a spatial Durbin model," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    3. Wenhui Luo & Gennian Tang & Peiling Yang & Chunxia Jia & Ruize Yang, 2024. "Examining Digital Economy’s Role in Urban Green Development: A Study of the Yangtze River Delta Region," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(3), pages 11250-11285, September.
    4. Guimei Wang & Muhammad Salman, 2023. "The impacts of heterogeneous environmental regulations on green economic efficiency from the perspective of urbanization: a dynamic threshold analysis," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 25(9), pages 9485-9516, September.
    5. Hongrui Jiao & Hongbing Deng & Shengmei Hu, 2025. "The Power of Collaboration: How Does Green Innovation Network Affect Urban Green Total Factor Productivity?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(2), pages 1-29, January.
    6. Sohail Ahmad Javeed & Xiang Cai & Rashid Latief, 2025. "Driving sustainable growth by unlocking the power of digital finance functions: the moderation of environmental regulations," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 8525-8555, April.
    7. Lingzhang Kong & Jinye Li, 2022. "Digital Economy Development and Green Economic Efficiency: Evidence from Province-Level Empirical Data in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-26, December.
    8. Senhua Huang & Lingming Chen, 2023. "The Impact of the Digital Economy on the Urban Total-Factor Energy Efficiency: Evidence from 275 Cities in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-20, February.
    9. Wang, Chao & Zhang, Yue-Jun, 2022. "The effect of environmental regulation and skill premium on the inflow of FDI:Evidence from Chinese industrial sectors," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 227-242.
    10. Yanli Ji & Jie Xue & Kaiyang Zhong, 2022. "Does Environmental Regulation Promote Industrial Green Technology Progress? Empirical Evidence from China with a Heterogeneity Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-23, January.
    11. He, Yiqing & Ding, Xin & Yang, Chuchu, 2021. "Do environmental regulations and financial constraints stimulate corporate technological innovation? Evidence from China," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    12. Zhao, Xing & Guo, Yifan & Feng, Tianchu, 2023. "Towards green recovery: Natural resources utilization efficiency under the impact of environmental information disclosure," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    13. Wang, Keqiang & Li, Guoxiang & Liu, Hongmei, 2021. "Porter effect test for construction land reduction," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    14. Yuanyuan Zhu & Rui Zhang & Jiaxing Cui, 2022. "Spatial Differentiation and Influencing Factors in the Ecological Well-Being Performance of Urban Agglomerations in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River: A Hierarchical Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(19), pages 1-22, October.
    15. Xie, Rong-hui & Yuan, Yi-jun & Huang, Jing-jing, 2017. "Different Types of Environmental Regulations and Heterogeneous Influence on “Green” Productivity: Evidence from China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 104-112.
    16. Tan, Weijie & Shen, Minghao & Pang, Yubiao & Liu, Yiqian, 2024. "Bank agglomeration and corporate environmental responsibility performance: Evidence from Chinese bank branch data," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    17. Xiaoxuan Li & Qi Wu, 2023. "The impact of digital economy on high-quality economic development: Research based on the consumption expansion," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(12), pages 1-19, December.
    18. Nusrate Aziz & Belayet Hossain & Laura Lamb, 2022. "Does green policy pay dividends?," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 24(2), pages 147-172, April.
    19. Yuxin Fang & Hongjun Cao & Jihui Sun, 2022. "Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Regional Green Development under China’s Environmental Decentralization System—Based on Spatial Durbin Model and Threshold Effect," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(22), pages 1-27, November.
    20. Zhang, Xiaoqian & Yao, Shujie & Zheng, Weiwei & Fang, Jing, 2023. "On industrial agglomeration and industrial carbon productivity --- impact mechanism and nonlinear relationship," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 283(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:endesu:v:27:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s10668-023-04164-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.