ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
This article is part of the Research TopicNew Insights and Advancement of Land Use Analytics in Modern City DevelopmentView all 16 articles
The Impact of 'Digital–Green' Integration on Urban Green Transformation Performance
Provisionally accepted
- 1Beibu Gulf University, Qinzhou, China
- 2Beibu Gulf Ocean Development Research Center, qinzhou, China
- 3Shandong University, Jinan, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
As nations increasingly focus on digital and sustainable development goals, exploring the impact of Digital–Green Integration (DGI) on Urban Green Transformation Performance (UGTP) is of significant theoretical and practical importance. Utilizing panel data from 283 Chinese cities (2011–2023), this study employs baseline regressions and spatial econometric models within a "government–market–society" framework to empirically examine DGI's effects on UGTP, along with its mechanisms and spatial heterogeneities. Findings reveal that DGI exerts a significantly negative impact on UGTP, though the long-term effect is weaker than the short-term one. DGI positively influences environmental pollution management, environmental protection governance, tax level, industrial structure adjustment, economic agglomeration, financial development level, and human capital. Environmental pollution management and protection governance, tax level, industrial structure adjustment, financial development level, and public service environment mitigate or suppress DGI's negative impact on UGTP, whereas economic agglomeration exacerbates it. While short-term public environmental consciousness intensifies DGI's adverse effects on UGTP, deeper understanding in the long term enables it to suppress these negatives. DGI's spatial distribution exhibits a Central rise, East-West divergence pattern. Long-term, small-and medium-sized cities face transformation bottlenecks. Moreover, DGI shows negative spillovers within a 760 km threshold but positive ones between 760–900 km. This study enriches DGI's theoretical framework, advances research on UGTP transmission mechanisms and regional heterogeneities, and offers insights for region-specific policy design.
Keywords: Digital–Green Integration (DGI), Economic agglomeration, Environmental Pollution Governmance, Green Finance Spatial Weighting, Human Capital, Urban Green Transformation Performance (UGTP)
Received: 17 Aug 2025; Accepted: 04 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zheng, Suo, Yu 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:
Lin Lin Zheng
Lei Suo
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.