Examining the Internal-Structural Effects of Internet Development on China’s Urban Green Total Factor Productivity

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the era of widespread internet access, green development has also entered an era of big data. Using panel data of 282 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2019, this study adopts slacks-based measure (SBM) directional distance function and Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) index to calculate the green total factor productivity (GTFP) and its decomposition (i.e. technological progress, scale efficiency, and resource allocation efficiency). On this basis, econometric models are used to study the internal-structural effects of internet development on China’s urban GTFP. It is found that: (1) Internet development plays a positive role in promoting urban GTFP; (2) specifically, internet development is proven to achieve this effect simultaneously by inducing technological innovations, optimizing economic scale, and improving resource allocation efficiency. Among these, inducing technological innovations is the most important path; (3) there are distinct regional heterogeneous effects of internet development on China’s urban GTFP. Based on the above results, corresponding policy suggestions are provided.