Technological Innovation, Emerging Industrial Agglomeration, and High-Quality Green Development

Exploring the transformation of the mode of economic growth has been widely concerned by researchers around the world, especially in the context of “dual carbon†goals. China’s economy is in a transition stage to high-quality green development (HGD), with technological innovation (TI) and emerging industrial agglomeration (EIA) as important drivers. However, existing studies lack a systematic empirical analysis on different dimensions of TI and its influence mechanism. In order to examine the mechanism of TI affecting HGD through EIA, this study uses the panel data in the western Yangtze River Delta of China from 2009 to 2019 to first comprehensively calculate the TI index, EIA index, and the HGD index as proxy variables for regional TI, EIA, and HGD, respectively, and then empirically examines the impact of TI on HGD and the heterogeneous impacts on HGD. Finally, we test the mediation effect of EIA between TI and HGD. The results show that TI effectively promotes regional HGD, and with the increase in the HGD index, the driving role of TI also increases. Technological innovation has heterogeneous impacts on HGD at different dimensions of innovation, time periods, and regions. Innovation output and diffusion have significant impacts on HGD, whereas innovation input and environment have insignificant impacts. The effects of TI promoting HGD are different before and after 2013. Additionally, the nexus between TI and HGD also differs across spatial distributions. The mediation effect indicates that EIA is an important mechanism for TI to release the dividends of HGD, and it explains approximately 29% of the conduction effect.