Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Energy Res.
Sec. Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2024.1432185
This article is part of the Research Topic Sustainable Energy Governance in the Context of Global Climate Change: Technologies, Mechanisms and Strategies View all 5 articles

What factors influence China's carbon productivity? Evidence based on moderation and mediation models

Provisionally accepted
Beiran Liu Beiran Liu 1Dayong Wang Dayong Wang 2Ni Zheng Ni Zheng 3*
  • 1 Anhui Jianzhu University, Hefei, Anhui Province, China
  • 2 Binzhou Medical University, Yantai, China
  • 3 Anhui Xinhua University, Hefei, Anhui, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The rise of the digital economy has promoted rapid economic growth, but the phenomenon of excessive government intervention in China still exists, limiting the development of innovative technologies, and thus affecting the improvement of carbon intensity. Using panel data from 30 regions in China between 2011 and 2019, the study uses moderating and intermediating models to discover potential relationships between government intervention, the digital economy, technological progress, and carbon productivity. The results suggest that: (1) The digital economy can reverse the adverse effects of government intervention on carbon productivity. (2) Technical innovation has been hampered by government involvement, yet it has successfully raised carbon productivity, and it serves as a vital partial mediator between the two, accounting for 39.72% of the total effect. (3) The digital economy plays a moderation role on multiple paths. (4) Regional differences exist in the moderation influence of the digital economy and the mediation effect of technological innovation. As mentioned earlier, the robustness test conducted on the results demonstrates the dependability of the conclusions drawn from the data analysis. Therefore, in order to optimize the digital economy’s ability to promote environmental protection, the government should strengthen its support for the development of the digital economy, promote market fairness, independent innovation, and adopt comprehensive policies to solve social problems. All regions need to promote digitalization and industrial structure reform according to their own advantages and conditions, and realize the coordinated development of regional digital economy.

    Keywords: Carbon productivity, digital economy, Government intervention, technological innovation, the moderation model, the mediation model

    Received: 13 May 2024; Accepted: 24 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Liu, Wang and Zheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ni Zheng, Anhui Xinhua University, Hefei, 230088, Anhui, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.