Has the Development of the Digital Economy Reduced the Regional Energy Intensity—From the Perspective of Factor Market Distortion, Industrial Structure Upgrading and Technological Progress?

Abstract

The digital economy has become the key driver of improving the quality and efficiency of the social economy and reshaping core competitiveness with the new technological revolution. This paper uses China’s provincial panel data from 2011 to 2019 and the entropy method to measure the digital economy development index of China’s provinces and cities and examines the impact of digital economy development on regional energy intensity using the fixed effect model. The results show that: (1) There is a significant difference in the development levels of the digital economy in the eastern and western regions of China. In addition, there is also a significant difference in the intensities of energy use between the northern and southern regions. (2) The development of the digital economy can significantly reduce China’s regional energy intensity. (3) There are three intermediary transmission paths for digital economy development to reduce the energy intensity through alleviating factor market distortion, promoting industrial structure upgrading and improving the technological innovation level, which are optimizing factor allocation, reducing factor distortion, adjusting and upgrading industrial structure and driving technological innovation applications. In general, all regions should further promote the development of digital industrialization and industrial digitization, enhance digital technology innovation and application, deepen the integrated development of digital economy and real economy and promote a new round of technological change and industrial upgrading on the basis of optimizing the allocation of important factors such as information data and artificial intelligence.