An Empirical Study on the Impact of Digital Economy on Environmental Quality in the Yangtze River Economic Belt: Based on Provincial Panel Data from 2006 to 2021

In recent years, driven by the emergence and advancement of various new technologies such as big data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and 5G communication, the Digital Economy (DE) has maintained rapid growth worldwide. However, at the same time, human exploitation and utilization of natural resources have surged, and environmental pollution (EP) issues have become increasingly prominent. This paper conducts a fixed-effect regression analysis based on provincial panel data from the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YEB) between 2006 and 2021 to explore the impact of DE development on environmental quality. The conclusions are as follows: (1) The development of the DE has promoted improvements in environmental quality (EQ) and significantly suppressed EP, while also confirming the existence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) in the form of an inverted U-shape; (2) The robustness test based on regional divisions of provinces shows that the impact of the DE on EQ varies across regions with different levels of economic development. In comparison to the upper and middle reaches of the YEB, the downstream regions, with higher economic development levels, experience a greater impact; (3) Under different pollution indicators (such as sulfur dioxide, PM2.5), the regression coefficients of the DE’s impact on EQ show slight differences, but all significantly demonstrate a negative correlation between the level of DE development and the level of EP.