From Clicks to Sustainable Development: The Role of Platform Economy in Energy Transition

The platform economy has reorganized urban service markets worldwide, yet its environmental implications remain insufficiently understood. We examine whether platform-economy entry affects urban energy transition, exploiting the staggered entry of food-delivery and ride-hailing platforms across 280 Chinese cities (2008–2023) as a quasi-natural experiment. Platform entry raises cities’ energy transition index by about 3%, with larger effects on current energy-system performance than on transition readiness. We provide evidence consistent with three mechanisms: capital substitution via electric-vehicle adoption, labor reallocation from energy-intensive sectors alongside induced technological upgrading, and expanded green innovation from platform-enabled time savings. Effects are stronger amid population aging, dependency burdens, and EV-charging infrastructure, but weaker in manufacturing-dependent cities—identifying a previously unrecognized environmental co-benefit of platform expansion.