Effects of ICT diffusion on environmental pollution: analysis of industrial reallocation effects in China
Effects of ICT diffusion on environmental pollution: analysis of industrial reallocation effects in China
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DOI：
10.1007/s11356-022-22314-3
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发表时间：
2022-08
影响因子：
5.8
通讯作者：
Minling Zhu;Shengrong Lu
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Minling Zhu;Shengrong Lu
信息和通信技术的发展给全世界的社会进步带来了根本性的变化。本研究使用1999年至2019年期间中国288个城市的面板数据，评估了宽带中国战略（BCS）试点计划对环境污染的影响。我们发现，BCS显着减少环境污染，这种效果是在中国东部和中国的城市更高的金融进步或宽带发展。有趣的是，BCS对环境污染的负面影响随着城市人力资本的提高而减弱。本文进一步探讨了产业效率和产业再分配机制，确定了BCS对试点城市环境污染的影响不仅通过现有文献中所建立的效率机制，还通过产业规模变化和不同产业间劳动力转移，即本文所称的产业再分配机制。具体而言，通过产业效率和再分配机制，BCS的实施提高了第一产业和第三产业的规模和效率，但降低了第二产业的规模和效率。第二产业的减少导致环境污染的减少。这表明，促进一国ICT基础设施的均衡发展，推动ICT的普及，可以通过产业再分配和效率的提高来缓解环境污染，特别是在区域经济和技术差异较大的国家。
The development of information and communication technology (ICT) has brought about fundamental changes in social progress worldwide. Using panel data from 288 Chinese cities for the period from 1999 to 2019, this study evaluates the effect of the pilot Broadband China Strategy (BCS) program on environmental pollution. We find that BCS significantly reduces environmental pollution, and that this effect is stronger in eastern China and in Chinese cities with higher financial progress or broadband development. Interestingly, the negative effect of BCS on environmental pollution decreases with the improvement of human capital in the cities. We further discuss industrial efficiency and reallocation mechanisms and ascertain that BCS affects environmental pollution in pilot cities not only through the efficiency mechanism as established in the existing literature but also through the industrial scale change and labor transfer between different industries, which we refer to as the industrial reallocation mechanism in this study. Specifically, via the industrial efficiency and reallocation mechanisms, the implementation of the BCS increases the scale and efficiency of the primary and tertiary industries but decreases the scale and efficiency of the secondary industry. This reduction in the secondary industry results in a decline in environmental pollution. It indicates that promoting the balanced development of a country’s ICT infrastructure and pushing forward ICT diffusion can help alleviate environmental pollution by industrial reallocation and efficiency improvement, especially in nations with significant regional economic and technological differences.