Digital Economy and Sustainable Development: Insight From Synergistic Pollution Control and Carbon Reduction

Faced with both pollution control and carbon reduction pressures, China is currently exploring a sustainable development mode of collaborative governance. At the same time, China’s digital economy is developing rapidly and becoming a potentially important approach to improve the efficiency of environmental governance. This paper measures the level of the digital economy (DDE) in Chinese cities, and seeks to reveal the impact and mechanism of the DDE on synergistic pollution control and carbon reduction. Based on data at the prefecture-level city level in China from 2011 to 2019 and applying the spatial Durbin model, the study finds that DDE promotes local pollution control and carbon reduction, but is detrimental to surrounding cities. After applying a series of robustness tests, the conclusion still holds. In addition, energy efficiency, green innovation, and industrial upgrading play an important mediating role. Furthermore, we measure the synergy degree of pollution and carbon reduction and demonstrate that DDE enhances synergy at the national and eastern levels. Our findings provide policy implications for leveraging the digital economy to promote sustainable development in China.