CAN E-COMMERCE DEVELOPMENT DRIVE THE URBAN LOWCARBON TRANSITION? EVIDENCE FROM CHINESE CITIES

In the era of the digital economy, the rapid development of e-commerce has profoundly influenced urban economic patterns and environmental dynamics.This study examines the impact of China's National E-commerce Demonstration Cities (NEDC) policy on urban carbon emissions.Using a dataset covering 265 cities from 2007 to 2023, we applied a progressive difference-in-differences model to assess the policy's effectiveness.The results demonstrate that the NEDC policy has significantly reduced urban carbon emission intensity by 23.1%.Mechanism analysis reveals that this reduction is primarily driven by improvements in energy utilization efficiency, promotion of green technological innovation, and enhancement of economic agglomeration effects.Further heterogeneity analysis indicates that the policy's impact is more pronounced in resource-based cities, and in those with a high proportion of clean energy, well-developed digital infrastructure, and a high degree of openness to external markets.Our study underscores the NEDC policy's efficacy in fostering low-carbon urban development and provides valuable insights for aligning digital economy initiatives with environmental sustainability goals.