Research on the Green Development Effect of Digital Economy under the Threshold of Environmental Regulation: An Empirical Test Based on China’s Provincial Panel Data

Abstract

Under the current macro trend of deep integration of global green transformation and digital revolution, the relationship between the digital economy and environmental sustainability has become a cutting-edge issue as a key force in reshaping the economic and social form. However, digital technology is a “double-edged sword”, which may also be accompanied by new resource consumption and governance challenges while enabling efficiency improvement and model innovation. Although existing studies have focused on the impact of digital economy on green development, most of them focus on the discussion of linear relationships, and lack of systematic testing of their inherent complex mechanisms, especially ignoring the nonlinear moderating effects that may arise from institutional factors such as environmental regulation, as well as the structural constraints caused by the dependence on traditional development paths. Based on this, this study aims to construct an integrated analysis framework including direct effects, nonlinear thresholds and structural constraints, and deeply reveal the complex mechanism of digital economy development affecting green development efficiency. Based on the panel data from 2011 to 2022 in 30 provinces in China, this study uses the two-way fixation effect model, panel threshold model and dynamic lag model to conduct an empirical test. The results show that, firstly, the development of digital economy has a significant and continuous direct promotion effect on green development efficiency, and this conclusion is still stable after endogenous treatment and lag effect analysis, which confirms that digital technology effectively drives the “decoupling” of economic growth and ecological pressure by optimizing resource allocation, improving energy efficiency and promoting green business formats. Secondly, the intensity of environmental regulation plays a key nonlinear moderating role in the relationship between the two, showing a significant single threshold effect: when the intensity of environmental regulation is in a reasonable range (below the threshold value), it forms an “incentive compatibility” effect with the digital economy, jointly promoting the improvement of green efficiency. However, when the intensity of regulation exceeds the critical point, excessive compliance costs and innovation crowding out effects will weaken the green empowerment potential of the digital economy, resulting in a diminishing marginal contribution. Finally, the study also identifies important structural constraints: the traditional extensive urbanization model and the under-optimized government intervention mode have a significant inhibitory effect on green efficiency, which highlights the necessity of collaborative promotion of governance and development mode transformation in the process of digital transformation. The contribution of this study is not only to empirically verify the green dividend of the digital economy, but more importantly, to reveal the institutional conditions and structural constraints of this dividend release, breaking through the linear assumptions of previous studies. The conclusion provides multi-dimensional enlightenment for policy formulation: at the strategic level, we should adhere to the synergy of digitalization and greening; At the regulatory level, it is necessary to implement precise and differentiated environmental policies and seek a dynamic balance between “incentive innovation” and “strict constraints”; At the path level, it is necessary to promote the transformation of urbanization and government governance to a high-quality model, so as to systematically unlock the green development potential of the digital economy.