Chinese Digital Economy and Urban Green Innovation Quality and Efficiency: The Threshold Effect Analysis Based on Chinese Cities Agglomeration

ABSTRACT This paper takes 277 Chinese cities data from 2011 to 2020 and measures the quality of green innovation and efficiency of green innovation based on super‐efficiency SBM model. This paper uses the fixed effect model to analyse the digital economy on the influence of the quality and efficiency of urban green innovation, and uses the threshold effect model to test the threshold effect gathered in this effect. This paper found that the digital economy can promote urban green innovation quality and efficiency. The conclusion is still valid after robustness tests, such as recalculating the level of the digital economy and adjusting the sample time interval. Heterogeneity test shows that digital economy has a more obvious effect on improving the quality of green innovation in central and western cities, non‐resource cities, cities with high‐level innovation and cities with low‐level enterprise density, while it has a more obvious effect on improving the efficiency of green innovation in eastern cities, non‐resource cities, cities with high‐level innovation and cities with high‐level enterprise density. Furthermore, digital economy can enhance the quality and efficiency of urban green innovation by increasing the degree of urban economic agglomeration, talent agglomeration, industrial agglomeration and financial agglomeration. Additionally, the quality of green innovation, the improvement effect of the digital economy is stronger when the degree of economic agglomeration exceeds the threshold. Finally, when the degree of economic and financial agglomeration exceeds the threshold, the improvement of green innovation efficiency caused by the digital economy is stronger. Therefore, the government should improve the infrastructure of the digital economy, pay attention to the role of agglomeration, develop the digital economy according to local conditions and promote urban green innovation.