CORE INDUSTRY AGGLOMERATION OF DIGITAL ECONOMY AND GREEN TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA

With the advent of the information age and the development of network technology, the digital economy with digital knowledge and information as crucial production factors has become the core driving force for high-quality green economic and social development. This paper took the exploration of the role of the digital economy as an engine for regional green and high-quality development as the purpose of the study, incorporates the core industry agglomeration of the digital economy into the analysis framework of green total factor productivity (GTFP), depicted the characteristics of GTFP change from the dual dimensions of direct and indirect effects, and analyzed the spatial effects of specialized and diversified digital economy’s core industry agglomeration on the impact of GTFP using data and spatial measurement models of 25 provincial-level regions in China from 2003 to 2019. Results show that both the specialized digital economy’s core industry agglomeration and the diversified digital economy’s core industry agglomeration can significantly improve GTFP, and both have significant spatial spillover effects. At the same time, the impact of the digital economy’s core industry agglomeration on GTFP is spatial heterogeneity. GTFP in the eastern region can be significantly enhanced by the digital economy’s core industry agglomeration, and the specialized digital economy’s core industry agglomeration has a significant negative spillover effect on GTFP in the eastern region. In the contrast, GTFP in the mid-western region can be significantly enhanced only by the specialized digital economy’s core industry agglomeration, and the digital economy’s core industry agglomeration has no significant spatial spillover effect on GTFP in the mid-western region. The obtained conclusions reveal that each region should reasonably establish a cluster model of core industries in the digital economy to facilitate the green development of the regional economy.