Digital Economy, Environmental Regulation, and Ecological Well-Being Performance: A Provincial Panel Data Analysis from China

作者：Xiaoming Song, Ze Tian, Chenhui Ding, Chao Liu, Wei Wang, Ronggai Zhao, Yingchun Xing · 发表于：International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.3390/ijerph191811801 · 被引用次数：45 · 研究领域：Energy, Environment, Economic Growth、Environmental Sustainability in Business、Environmental Impact and Sustainability

China is currently in a strategic opportunity period for green and high-quality development, and developing the digital economy is an important choice to achieve environmental pollution control, improve regional ecological efficiency, and enhance social welfare. In this context, the impact of the digital economy on ecological well-being performance and the role of environmental regulation need to be examined. In this study, the super-efficiency SBM-DEA model was used to measure the level of ecological well-being performance in 30 provinces of China from 2011 to 2019. On this basis, the mediating effect model and spatial Durbin model were adopted to explore the transmission mechanism and regional heterogeneity of the impact of the digital economy on ecological well-being performance. The empirical results show that the digital economy significantly contributes to regional ecological well-being performance in China, and there is significant spatial spillover as well. Moreover, the findings still hold under robustness tests. The results also show that environmental regulation is an important transmission path for the digital economy to enhance regional ecological well-being performance, and the impact of environmental regulation on ecological well-being performance varies by region; specifically, the impact in eastern China is positive but not significant. However, the digital economy plays a significant positive role in promoting ecological well-being performance in the central...