Toward low‐carbon sustainable development: Exploring the impact of digital economy development and industrial restructuring

TLDR

Low‑carbon sustainable development is essential for economic growth and environmental protection, requiring a fundamental transformation of the industrial structure and the digital economy as a key driver of that transformation. This study investigates whether digital economy development reshapes industrial structure and thereby promotes low‑carbon sustainable development, focusing on the mediating role of industrial upgrading. The authors construct a city‑level regression model to test the relationships among digital economy, industrial structure upgrading, and low‑carbon development. Results show that digital economy development directly promotes low‑carbon sustainable development and does so indirectly through industrial structure upgrading, confirming the proposed framework.

Abstract

Abstract Low‐carbon sustainable development is considered an essential strategy for achieving economic growth and environmental protection, requiring a fundamental transformation of the industrial structure, including developing clean technologies, promoting energy efficiency, and adopting sustainable production and consumption patterns. Simultaneously, the evolving digital economy is acknowledged as an essential driver in optimizing the industrial structure. Therefore, can digital economy development reshape the industrial structure and lead to low‐carbon sustainable development? The main purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of industrial structure upgrading in the relationship between the digital economy and low‐carbon development. Its ultimate purpose is to explore more possible paths to achieve low‐carbon development. This paper builds a regression model based on the data of cities. We found that digital economic development can directly promote low‐carbon sustainable development, a conclusion that still holds after endogeneity discussion and robustness testing. Additionally, digital economy development can promote industrial structure upgrading and thus promote low‐carbon sustainable development, meaning that industrial structure upgrading is an effective mechanism for digital economy development to promote low‐carbon sustainable development. This paper provides empirical evidence for the positive environmental externalities of digital economic development and establishes a basic research framework of “digital economic development → industrial structure upgrading → low‐carbon sustainable development.”