Impact and threshold effect of Internet technology upgrade on forestry green total factor productivity: Evidence from China

Abstract

China’s forestry industry has a weak Internet foundation and cleaner production in the process of forest product production lacks supervisory mechanisms. To propose ways to overcome these issues, this paper studies the influence of the Internet on the forestry industry and how different Internet technologies can help to optimize and coordinate the process of cleaner production. First, based on the development status of “Internet plus forestry” in China, that is to use Internet technology to drive the development of forestry, a judgment about the current stage of the technology is made. It was considered to be in the process of technology upgrade from the stage of technological Internet based on infrastructure to the stage of platform Internet based on network platform. Second, this paper calculates the green forestry total factor productivity and green technical changes as a reflection of the effect of regional forestry cleaner production. From the static and dynamic perspectives, the function paths of the technological Internet and platform Internet for green total factor productivity and its decomposition were discussed. The results are as follows: (i). The cleaner production effect of the eastern Chinese provinces with a more developed economy showed weak growth, and their increment range of return to scale was small. However, several central and western regions showed a strong growth trend, and the return to scale increased significantly. (ii). Both technological Internet and platform Internet exerted a positive impact on forestry cleaner production in the short term, and the promoting effect of the technological Internet was stronger. However, in the long run, the technological Internet has obstructed the change of green technical efficiency and green technical progress, while platform Internet still exerted positive effects on both. (iii).The threshold model is introduced to verify that the influence of platform Internet on forestry green total factor productivity is nonlinear. Finally, this paper provides a basis and policy instruction for the improvement of the operation mechanism of cleaner production under the Internet environment. Furthermore, this paper explains how to coordinate different Internet technologies toward the development of cleaner production.