Digital economy and urban green innovation: from the perspective of environmental regulation

As a new economic form, the digital economy plays an important role in promoting urban green innovation. Based on the data for 287 cities at the prefecture level and above in China from 2011 to 2019, we calculated the development level of the digital economy at the city level and empirically tested the influence mechanism of the digital economy empowering urban green innovation. The results show that the digital economy can not only directly promote urban green innovation but also indirectly have a positive impact on green innovation by improving the intensity of environmental regulation. This conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests. The incentive effect of the digital economy on green innovation shows a certain heterogeneity. The eastern region and cities with high administrative levels receive more green innovation spillover dividends from the digital economy than the central and western regions and cities with low administrative levels. Further analysis shows that the promoting effect of the digital economy on green innovation presents non-linear spillover characteristics of an “increasing marginal effect”, indicating that the “network effect” and “Metcalfe’s law” are still applicable in regional innovation systems.