Digital economy, CO2 emissions and China's environmental sustainable development— an analysis based on TVP-VAR model

Abstract

The growth of digital economy and sustainable development of environment are important issues related to high-quality economic development in the new era. This paper selects the yearly data of China from 2007 to 2021, constructs the China's Environmental Performance Index(EPI), and establishes the TVP-VAR model to investigate the dynamic time-varying relationship among digital economy growth, CO₂ emissions, and environment sustainability over short, medium and long-term. The results indicate that the relationships among them are time-varying at all terms. Specifically, in first, the growth of the digital economy exerts a negative impulse on CO₂ emissions, with its immediate consequences being more pronounced than its prolonged impacts. Secondly, there exist positive impulses between the the digital economy and environment sustainability. CO₂ emissions has a negative impact on sustainable development of environment. Thirdly, they have same influencing tendencies at certain time points, but different impact degrees. The impact of the digital economy on environmental sustainable development has significantly increased since the COVID-19 outbreak. Therefore, the development of digital economy can effectively reduce CO₂ emissions and promote the sustainable development of the environment.