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Analysis of the mechanism of the impact of internet development on green economic growth: evidence from 269 prefecture cities in China

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Abstract

As the digital economy develops rapidly and the network information technology advances, new development models represented by the network economy have emerged, which have a crucial impact on green economic growth. However, the relevant previous studies lacked the role of analyzing the direct and indirect effects of internet development on green economic growth at the prefecture-level city level. For this purpose, this paper aims to examine the intrinsic mechanism of the impact of internet development on green economic growth and provide empirical support for cities and regions in China to increase internet construction. Furthermore, the mixed model (EBM), which includes both radial and non-radial distance functions, is applied to calculate the green economic growth index. Fixed effect model and mediation effect model are also employed to test influence mechanisms of the internet development on green economic growth using panel data of 269 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2019. The statistical results reveal that internet development has contributed significantly to green economic growth. When the internet development level increases by 1 unit, the green economic growth level increases by an average of 5.0372 units. However, regional heterogeneity is evident between internet development and green economic growth, that is, the promoting effect of internet development on green economic growth is gradually enhanced from the eastern region to the western region. We also find that internet development guides industrial structure upgrading improves environmental quality and accelerates enterprise innovation, which indirectly contributes to green economic growth. And internet development mainly achieves green economic growth through enterprise innovation. Based on the above findings, we concluded that policymakers should not only strengthen the guiding role of social actors to promote the stable development of the internet industry, but also foster the construction of the three models of “internet+industry integration,” “internet+environmental governance,” and “internet+enterprise innovation” to promote green economic growth.

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Notes

  1. http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/202102/t20210227_1814154.html

  2. https://www.bp.com/zh_cn/china/home/news/press-releases/news-06-17.html

  3. Green economic growth is the promotion of economic growth and development while ensuring that natural assets can continue to provide a variety of resource and environmental services for human well-being (Jänicke 2012). A development model of green economic growth, in other words, is based on minimizing environmental risks and ecological damage, seeks low carbon and high energy efficiency, and is a model of sustainable development that embraces social equity (Luukkanen et al. 2019).

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Funding

The authors acknowledge financial support from the Project of Natural Science Foundation of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (2017D01C071), the key scientific research projects of universities in Xinjiang (XJEDU2019SI003), and the graduate research and innovation project of Xinjiang University (XJ2019G005, XJ2020G020, XJ2021G013, XJ2021G014). The usual disclaimer applies.

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Author notes

  1. Weilong Wang, Qiying Ran, Muhammad Irfan, Siyu Ren and Munir Ahmad contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Xinjiang University, Urumqi, 830047, China

    Jianlong Wang, Weilong Wang, Qiying Ran & Xiaodong Yang

  2. Center for Innovation Management Research of Xinjiang, Urumqi, 830047, China

    Jianlong Wang, Weilong Wang, Qiying Ran & Xiaodong Yang

  3. School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Muhammad Irfan & Haitao Wu

  4. Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Muhammad Irfan & Haitao Wu

  5. School of Economics, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China

    Siyu Ren

  6. School of Economics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Munir Ahmad

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  1. Jianlong Wang
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  2. Weilong Wang
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Contributions

Jianlong Wang: conceptualization, project administration, writing (review and editing), writing (original draft). Qiying Ran: formal analysis, data curation. Munir Ahmad: software, visualization. Haitao Wu: writing (original draft), writing (review and editing), formal analysis. Siyu Ren: methodology, data curation. Weilong Wang: writing (review and editing), validation. Muhammad Irfan: writing (review and editing), validation. Xiaodong Yang: writing (review and editing), writing (original draft), conceptualization, methodology, funding acquisition, supervision.

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Correspondence to Xiaodong Yang or Haitao Wu.

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Weilong Wang, Qiying Ran, Muhammad Irfan, Siyu Ren, Munir Ahmad and should be considered co-first authors.

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Wang, ., Wang, W., Ran, Q. et al. Analysis of the mechanism of the impact of internet development on green economic growth: evidence from 269 prefecture cities in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 9990–10004 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16381-1

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