Digital Economy, Environmental Regulation, and Carbon Emissions: Based on a Dynamic Panel Threshold Model

Since the proposed "30•60" goal on achieving carbon neutrality, the research topic whether digital economy can promote regional low-carbon development is an important issue worth studying. The paper uses panel data from 30 Chinese provinces (excluding Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) from 2000 to 2020 and employs a dual-fixed-effect model to investigate the impact of digital economy and environmental regulation on regional carbon emission intensity. It also explores the regulatory and threshold effects of different environmental regulation tools on the impact of digital economy. The regulatory effects and threshold effects of different environmental regulation instruments on the impact of digital economy are studied. Our results show that digital economy has an inverted U-shaped relationship with regional carbon emissions intensity, the impact of environmental regulation on regional carbon emissions has both regulatory and threshold effects, there are significant double-thresholds effect of different environmental regulatory instruments on carbon emissions. Moreover, the magnitude of the effects on carbon emissions in different digital economic levels are different.