How Does Internet Development Affect Green Technology Innovation in China?

Abstract

With the advent of the information age, the Internet is a new tool for “mass entrepreneurship and innovation initiative” and contributes to the emergence of new products, new technologies and new business formats. However, the question of how the Internet development affects green technological innovation has not been well answered. This article measures the comprehensive Internet development level of 264 prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2018 in China, and then conducts empirical research. The results show that Internet development can increase high-quality and low-quality green technological innovation. This conclusion remains robust after endogeneity testing. Secondly, Internet development can not only directly promote green technology innovation, but also indirectly play a positive role through financial development and industrial structure upgrading. Thirdly, the positive effect of Internet development on green technology innovations presents significant nonlinear characteristics of increasing marginal effect. It indicates that Metcalfe's law is valid in this paper.