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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1518161
This article is part of the Research Topic Advancing Carbon Reduction and Pollution Control Policies Management: Theoretical, Application, and Future Impacts View all 20 articles

A Study on the Carbon Emission Reduction Pathways of China's Digital Economy from Multiple Perspectives

Provisionally accepted
Xiaoyan Shi Xiaoyan Shi 1Jiaxin Wu Jiaxin Wu 2*Zhenhua Zhu Zhenhua Zhu 2Zhijiang Li Zhijiang Li 3
  • 1 Jiangsu Maritime Institute, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
  • 2 Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, Nanjing, China
  • 3 School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, Liaoning Province, China

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

    As the share of the digital economy's output continues to rise each year, the emergence of new industries such as e-commerce, mobile payments, and cloud computing has opened new avenues for carbon emission reduction (CER). Based on panel data from 30 provinces in China, this article systematically analyzes the CER pathways of China's digital economy (DE) from the perspectives of direct effects, indirect effects, threshold effects, and heterogeneity analysis. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) China's DE has a significant CER effect. ( 2) The DE can indirectly reduce regional carbon emissions (CE) by industrial structures and technological innovation, with the mediating effect of technological innovation being more significant than that of industrial structure. (3) Urbanization has threshold effects on the CER effect of China's DE. Under the influence of urbanization, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between DE and CE. (4) Heterogeneity analysis finds that, compared to other types of provinces, the CER effect of DE is stronger in non-resource-based and economically developed provinces. (5) We propose five tailored recommendations for CER: fostering the synergistic development of the DE and industrial structure, strengthening the role of technological innovation, advancing urbanization and carbon reduction in a differentiated manner, formulating distinct policies for resource-based and nonresource-based provinces, and enhancing the construction of digital infrastructure in less-developed regions.

    Keywords: Digital Economy (DE), Carbon Emission Reduction (CER), Impact pathways, Mediation effects, Threshold effects

    Received: 28 Oct 2024; Accepted: 06 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Shi, Wu, Zhu and Li. 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: Jiaxin Wu, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, Nanjing, 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.