Impact of Digital Economy on Carbon Emissions from Rural Energy Consumption

Abstract

Jie Sun

Focusing on rural areas, we constructed a rural digital economy indicator system, based on the panel data of 30 provinces and cities in China from 2013 to 2020, and empirically examined the nonlinear relationship between the digital economy affecting the carbon emission of rural energy consumption by adopting the double-fixed-effects panel model, the threshold-effects model, the spatial-effects model, and the moderating-effects model, and the main conclusions are as follows: (1) The influence of the digital economy on rural energy consumption carbon emissions is an inverted U-shape; and it mainly acts on rural living carbon emissions, the eastern and western regions and the developed regions of the digital economy; it mainly originates from the two dimensions of digital infrastructure and digital services. (3) There is a significant threshold effect of the digital economy on rural production carbon emissions, and the growth effect on production carbon emissions is gradually decreasing, but it still does not form an inverted U-shaped relationship. (4) The spatial direct effect of digital economic development on rural energy consumption carbon emissions is significant, and the indirect effect is small. (5) The upgrading of energy consumption structure can expand the carbon emission reduction effect of rural digital economy and play a certain regulatory effect. Research value: Provide new ideas for rural areas to carry out energy revolution and solve carbon emission reduction problems, and provide important references to enhance the level of rural green economy through the development of digital economy.