ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1579459
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Carbon Reduction and Pollution Control Policies Management: Theoretical, Application, and Future ImpactsView all 44 articles
Digital Technological Innovation and Urban Carbon Emission Intensity: A Nonlinear Path Toward Sustainability
Provisionally accepted
- 1China University of Geosciences Wuhan, Wuhan, China
- 2Hulunbuir College, Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia, China
- 3Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China
- 4University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
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With the advancement of sustainable development goals, digital technological innovation has emerged as a critical pathway for mitigating urban carbon emission intensity. Utilizing a balanced panel dataset of Chinese cities spanning 2012-2019, our paper examines the influence of digital technological innovation on urban carbon intensity. The findings reveal the following. (1) There exists an inverted U-shaped relationship between digital technological innovation and carbon intensity. (2) A nonlinear mediation mechanism is identified, whereby digital technological innovation influences carbon intensity through its effects on energy intensity and governmental environmental attention. (3) Substantive digital technological innovation reaches the turning point more rapidly. (4) The inverted U-shaped relationship holds exclusively for non-environmentally prioritized cities, while it is not evident in environmentally prioritized cities. (5) This relationship is consistently observed across both Broadband China pilot cities and non-pilot cities. These findings not only deepen the understanding of the interplay between digital technological innovation and carbon intensity, but also provide theoretical insights and practical guidance for achieving sustainable development objectives.
Keywords: digital economy, digital technology innovation, carbon emissions, carbon intensity, government environmental attention
Received: 19 Feb 2025; Accepted: 11 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xu, Li, Ya, Li, Xia and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jiapeng Li, China University of Geosciences Wuhan, Wuhan, China
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