Interaction impact of demographic and digital economy on carbon emissions in China

The Moderating Effect of Urbanization on the Link Between Digitalization and Carbon Emissions

Over the past two decades, Asia's economic transformation has driven by digitalization and urbanization, and yet its environmental impact remains insufficiently understood. Using panel data from 22 Asian countries between 2000 and 2021, this study investigates whether internet usage influences carbon emissions and whether urbanization (urban population) amplifies this effect. The results reveal that urbanization intensifies the environmental impact of internet usage (digitalization). Testing for endogeneity concerns using a quasi-natural experiment, the results confirm that the moderating effect persists under stable economic conditions; however, the impact is not prominent during crises such as COVID-19. The discoveries emphasize the growing challenge of integrating digital expansion, rapid urban development, and environmental sustainability. More importantly, the study highlights the need for synchronization between environmental engineering strategies and urban planning methods that align with digital infrastructure. This evidence contributes to the debate on sustainable urban transitions in emerging economies and offers insights into how environmental engineering and urban planning can reduce the environmental pressure of digitalization.

Does digital economy reduce urban carbon emissions intensity in China? New perspective on a nonparametric additive model

As the world’s largest carbon emitter, China faces significant pressure to reduce urban carbon emissions intensity (CEI) in order to achieve its carbon peak and carbon neutrality targets. This study examines the impact of digital economy development on CEI using panel data from 249 Chinese cities during 2010–2019. Employing fixed-effects models and nonparametric additive models, we provide evidence that digital economy development is associated with reductions in CEI at the national level. Importantly, the relationship is both nonlinear and regionally heterogeneous. While the eastern and central regions display a generally declining association between digitalization and CEI, the western region exhibits an inverted U-shaped pattern. These results suggest that the environmental impacts of digitalization vary across regions and development stages, rather than following a uniform linear trend. Furthermore, distinguishing between traditional and new-generation digital economy components reveals that the new-generation digital economy exhibits broader and more consistent carbon-reduction effects across regions, whereas the environmental impacts of the traditional digital economy are more heterogeneous. The findings highlight the stage-dependent, region-specific, and technology-specific nature of the digital-environment nexus, offering new insights into how digital transformation can contribute to urban low-carbon development.

Mechanisms Through Which the Digital Economy Influences Agricultural Carbon Emissions

The empirical results show that the digital economy significantly reduces agricultural carbon emissions, a conclusion that holds after a series of robustness tests and relevant policy recommendations are proposed in terms of institutional design, system development, and policy guidance.

Spatial analysis of the digital economy’s impact on the ecological environment: evidence from Chinese cities

Toward A New Equilibrium: The Intersection of Economy, Population, and Environmental Degradation in Southeast Asia

This study examines the relationship between population growth, economic growth, and environmental degradation in Southeast Asia using panel data from ten countries during the 2018–2023 period. Data were obtained from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank and analyzed using panel regression techniques that integrate both cross-sectional and time-series dimensions. The findings indicate that economic growth is significantly associated with several dimensions of environmental degradation, particularly land-use dynamics, whereas population size does not exhibit a statistically significant effect across the estimated models. The results suggest that environmental outcomes in Southeast Asia are influenced more by economic structure, institutional quality, and environmental governance than by demographic expansion alone. Although the findings are consistent with arguments commonly discussed in the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) literature, this study does not directly test the EKC hypothesis because it excludes nonlinear income specifications. The study highlights the importance of strengthening environmental governance, promoting green technologies, and supporting sustainable development strategies to mitigate long-term ecological pressures. These findings contribute to the growing literature on sustainable development and environmental management in Southeast Asia.

Synergies of the Sharing Economy: Its Role in China's Energy Transition and Sustainable Development.

The sharing economy (SECO) has become a disruptive economic model with implications for both economic performance and energy systems. This paper analyzes the relationships among SECO, GDP per capita, and nuclear energy consumption (NEC) in China from 2005 to 2020. The analysis addresses heterogeneous associations among various points of the conditional distribution by using a quantile autoregressive distributed lag (QARDL) framework. The findings show that SECO correlates positively with GDP per capita across most quantiles, suggesting that it contributes to improving economic activity by better resource use and the adoption of digital platforms. On the contrary, the dependency between SECO and NEC is observed to be strong only at the higher quantiles, indicating that its impact on energy dynamics is more significant under conditions of high energy demand. The results also indicate a high degree of heterogeneity and two-way predictive relationships among variables, suggesting the presence of dynamic feedback mechanisms rather than unidirectional influence. The results should be considered indicative associations rather than causal relationships, given the use of proxy measures, the small sample size, and the observational design. Overall, the research provides fine-tuning evidence on the context-specificity of the sharing economy in shaping economic and energy-related dynamics in China's changing development environment.