Can the Digital Economy Alleviate Pollution and Carbon Mitigation Pressure? Evidence from China’s Green Transition

Against the background of the global green transition, digitalization has become an important driver of energy-efficiency improvement and carbon mitigation, making its overall environmental effects worthy of further investigation. This study constructs a pollution and carbon mitigation pressure (PCMP) index covering emission load, governance support, and ecological carrying capacity to examine the effect of the digital economy on PCMP, its transmission mechanism, boundary conditions, and regional heterogeneity. Using panel data for 30 Chinese provinces from 2013 to 2024, we apply a two-way fixed-effects model, mechanism analysis, a moderation model, instrumental-variable estimation, and a spatial Durbin model. The results show that digital-economy development significantly reduces PCMP, and this conclusion remains stable across multiple robustness checks. The digital economy alleviates PCMP by promoting industrial structure upgrading, while urbanization significantly strengthens this effect. The effect is more pronounced in Northern China, with a statistically significant north–south difference. Spatial analysis further shows that higher digital-economy development in neighboring regions is significantly associated with lower local PCMP. These findings extend research on the environmental effects of the digital economy by showing how industrial upgrading, urban conditions, and cross-regional linkages shape its contribution to pollution control, low-carbon transition, and regional sustainable development, with implications for the broader goals of the 2030 Agenda. Given the limitations of provincial data and the identification strategy, future research could use city-level data to further examine the underlying mechanisms and causal effects.