The impact of digital consumption on energy transition in China

Against the backdrop of a flourishing digital economy, digital consumption has emerged as a crucial driving force behind the expansion of domestic demand, overcoming of spatial and temporal limitations, and enhancement of the efficiency of resource allocation, and provides a new impetus to promote energy transition. Using the quasi-natural experiment provided by the national information consumption pilot policy, the results of difference-in-differences model show that digital consumption significantly promotes energy transition, and this finding still holds after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis reveals that digital consumption accelerates energy transition mainly through information diffusion, innovation-driven, industrial structure optimization, and consumption expansion effects. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the promoting effect of digital consumption on energy transition is more pronounced in cities with larger populations, those in the eastern region, those that are not old industrial bases, and those with higher digital infrastructure levels. The paper provides policy implications for the further strengthening of the development of digital consumption, the continuous unlocking of the potential for information consumption, and the facilitation of urban energy transition.