Does technological innovation promote green development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt? Based on the spatial econometric analysis

The Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is a prominent strategic region in China, and technological innovation, being a core development driver, playing critical support role to facilitate YREB’s green development. This article evaluates green development level of YREB according to Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework, and explores influences of technological innovation on the regional green development employing spatial econometric model. Research results manifest that green development reveals a continuous rising tendency, and it is generally better in lower reaches. Meanwhile, local green development plays positive spatial spillover effects on neighboring areas. Secondly, technological innovation plays an obvious driving function on local green development in the whole YREB, while only upper and middle reaches witness significantly positive spatial spillover effects. Thirdly, mechanism analysis result implies that the technological innovation could facilitate the regional green development through three paths: improving technological efficiency, decreasing pollution emission, and upgrading industrial structure. Furthermore, discussions with panel threshold models show that different impacts of technological innovation on green development depend on economic and technological factors. An increased level of technological and economic level will multiply influence that technological innovation on green development.