The role of information and communication technology on green total factor energy efficiency: Does environmental regulation work?

Abstract

China is gradually changing its pursuit of rapid economic growth into a pursuit of economic development quality. In this context, whether "cyberpower" and "digital China" strategies are truly conducive to China's sustainable development still needs to be further tested. This paper constructs China's provincial information and communication technology (ICT) comprehensive development level index from the four dimensions of penetration, coverage, information resources, and business and then innovatively undertakes a theoretical framework integrating ICT, environmental regulations, and green total factor energy efficiency (GTFEE) for the analysis. Using panel data from China's 30 provincial administrative regions from 2006 to 2017, this study explores the direct impact, moderating effect, nonlinear relationship, and regional differences of ICT development on GTFEE. It is indicated that ICT development plays a positive role in promoting GTFEE and that this role is moderated by environmental regulations. The regression results of the dynamic threshold model indicate that diverse environmental regulation intensities lead to different influences of ICT development on GTFEE. Moreover, the impact of ICT development on GTFEE is heterogeneous among different regions. Specifically, the western region may gain more benefits from ICT development by virtue of the late-mover advantage.

Does the Construction of National Eco-Industrial Demonstration Parks Improve Green Total Factor Productivity? Evidence from Prefecture-Level Cities in China

“…Reasonable investment in fixed assets not only reduces the cost of industrial development and avoids environmental degradation caused by unreasonable investment, but also promotes the construction of municipal infrastructure which paves the way for the improvement of GTFP [98]. Informatization level (lninternet) can significantly enhance GTFP, which is consistent with the findings of Hao et al (2021) [99]. As the Internet can enhance environmental information generation, transmission, access, and application capabilities, which are used to trigger, enable, and structure environmental information governance.…”

Assessing the Impact of the Digital Economy on Green Total Factor Energy Efficiency in the Post-COVID-19 Era

“…However, this is beyond the scope of this study, so we suggest that it be carried out in future studies. There is similar evidence of a significant spatial correlation between energy efficiency and information and communication technologies across Chinese provinces (Hao et al, 2021b). Therefore, an investigation of the spatial linkages between the digital economy and GTFEE is very beneficial and promising for policymakers and scholars.…”

“…The resulting accelerated production, shorter production cycles, and more scientific production methods and inventory management effectively reduce the waste of resources and increased storage costs caused by stalled products on the market (Ciocoiu, 2011). In addition, from the specific aspects of production and operation, enterprises are increasingly active in the downstream integration with the digital economy to form innovative models, including online sales, mobile social marketing, prepaid deposits, personalization, and other marketing models (Hao et al, 2021b). As the digital economy has significantly contributed to the transformation of the supply chain from traditional centralized mass production to marketoriented on-demand manufacturing, personalized and flexible production, thus improving the efficiency of production equipment and promoting green total factor energy efficiency (Lele et al, 2021).…”

The emerging driving force of inclusive green growth: Does digital economy agglomeration work?

“…Because the ultimate objective of inclusive green growth is balancing the economy and environment (Sun et al, 2020), labor and energy consumption (Sun et al, 2020) and capital stock (Jia, Fan, et al, 2021) are regarded as input indicators. Wastewater, soot emissions, and industrial sulfur dioxide are taken as unexpected outputs (Hao et al, 2022), while GDP is used as the expected output to estimate inclusive green growth, as shown in Figure 2.…”

“…Since reform and opening up, China's economy has achieved leapfrog development (Hao et al, 2022); consequently, massive ecological and environmental costs have been paid (Chai et al, 2021). Significantly, China still faces prominent problems such as excessive income inequality, unbalanced development, and ecological and environmental issues (Hao et al, 2021;Nayal et al, 2021;, which were caused by the insufficiency of "inclusiveness" and "greening" in the traditional economy.…”