Does digital investment affect carbon efficiency? Spatial effect and mechanism discussion
Abstract
Digitalization supported by ICT capital is a core weapon for decoupling economic growth from carbon emissions. This research innovatively calculates ICT capital in China from 2001 to 2018 and explores how ICT capital affects carbon emission efficiency and its spatial spillover effects from a digital investment perspective. The empirical results prove that ICT capital contributes to improvement of carbon emission efficiency, pure technical efficiency, scale efficiency and technological progress. Furthermore, interestingly, ICT communication capital was found to have the strongest effect on improving carbon emission efficiency, while ICT hardware capital and software capital have a weaker effect. The spatial effect demonstrates that ICT capital not only helps improve the local carbon emission efficiency but also has spatial spillovers to the surrounding areas and has the most prominent effect on the carbon emission efficiency of the central region. The mediation tests illustrate that ICT capital improves carbon emission efficiency by promoting technological innovation, alleviating industrial structure distortions, enhancing resource allocation efficiency and accelerating human capital accumulation. These findings have important policy guiding significance for the region to stimulate the potential of ICT capital and facilitate the low-carbon transformation of the economy.
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In some cases, investment in the wrong type of technology can be detrimental to environmental sustainability.
“In some cases, investment in the wrong type of technology can be detrimental to environmental sustainability [66,75,156].”
From ICT sector, digitization and environmental sustainability: A systematic review of the literature from 2000 to 2022 (2023) · cites this paper as [75]
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- Authors
- Xu, Q., Zhong, M., & Cao, M.
- Affiliations
- Central South University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Zhong, Meirui
- ORCID
- Xu, Qiong
- Venue
- Science of The Total Environment
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2022-06
- Volume
- 827
- Pages
- 154321
- ISSN
- 0048-9697 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4220952087
- Cited by
- 201
- References
- 75
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 50 · 2024: 61 · 2023: 51 · 2022: 21
- FWCI
- 36.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- The Science of The Total Environment (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences (18ZDA049, 18ZDA061, 21&ZD103)
- Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities of the Central South University (2021znzk01)
- Innovation-Driven Project of Central South University
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (71633006, 71874207)
- National Major Science and Technology Projects of China
- Central South University (2019CX016)
- National Development and Reform Commission
- Science and Technology Innovative Research Team in Higher Educational Institutions of Hunan Province (18ZWB19)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Energy, Environment, Economic Growth
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Efficiency Analysis Using DEA
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Digital Economy and Transformation
- Keywords
- ICT capital, digital investment, carbon efficiency, spatial spillover effects, pure technical efficiency, scale efficiency, technological progress, technological innovation, allocative efficiency, human capital accumulation, low-carbon transition, China
- MeSH terms
- Carbon, Carbon Dioxide, China, Efficiency, Humans, Industry, Economic Development
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