Internet, Green Innovation and Industrial Upgrading

Abstract

The internet and green innovation are important driving forces to promote industrial high-quality and sustainable development at present. Studying their independent and interactive effects on industrial upgrading is of great practical and theoretical significance. Based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2006 to 2019, this paper constructs a spatial error model based on four weight matrices to study independent and interactive effects of the internet and green innovation on industrial upgrading. The results show that the internet, green innovation, and industrial upgrading have significant spatial correlation, with all showing high–high and low–high agglomeration trends. Both the internet and green innovation contribute to industrial upgrading, and their interaction effect is more significant for enhancing industrial upgrading. The heterogeneity analysis finds that green innovation has a greater impact on industrial upgrading in eastern China, and the internet in the central and western regions has a greater impact on industrial upgrading. Few previous studies put the internet, green innovation, and industrial upgrading into the unified framework. This paper expands and enriches the research on the relationship among the three to analyze the independent and interactive effects of the internet and green innovation on industrial upgrading by spatial metrology. We also promote the construction, promotion, and application of the internet and optimization of the green innovation environment, taking the “Internet plus green innovation” strategy as the foothold and implementing differentiation and a dynamic strategy that provides a reference for how to realize the transformation and upgrading of China’s industrial structure through the internet and green-innovation strategy.