Coupling Coordination between Digital Economy and Silver Economy and Spatiotemporal Evolution

In the present work, a comprehensive index system for the evaluation of the digital economy and silver economy was established. Specifically, the indices of comprehensive development of digital and silver economy for 16 administrative regions (provinces and municipalities) in China with a high aging degree from 2014 to 2023 were obtained by the entropy method, and the calculation results were then visualized by the ArcGIS software. The coupling coordination degree between these two economic forms was measured by a coupling coordination degree model, and the modeling results were further visualized by 3D Gaussian kernel density curves generated in Matlab. The main findings are as follows: First, both the digital economy and silver economy demonstrated a high level of comprehensive development, with the latter witnessing more strength; Second, both forms of economy witnessed a decline post the pandemic compared to the years before the pandemic; Third, a high and increasingly higher coupling degree was observed between the two forms of economy over the years of study; Moreover, in the Northeastern part of China where severe aging was present, silver economy showed a significantly lower degree of development than the degree of aging; Finally, despite the improving coupling coordination between the two economic forms across the regions overall, a polarization trend was observed in the western and northeastern areas. Suggestions were proposed at the end of the paper to boost higher coordination and sustainability of the two forms of economy.