Impact of Digital Place-Based Policies on the Inclusive Green Growth: Evidence from National Digital Economy Innovation and Development Pilot Zone in China

The National Digital Economy Innovation and Development Pilot Zone (NDEIDPZ) policy, as a form of digital place-based policy, can strongly promote the high-quality development of the digital economy in China, generating broad-based benefits across economic, social, and environmental dimensions. This study adopts a synergistic perspective that integrates economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability to assess the impact of the NDEIDPZ policy. Utilizing a quasi-natural experimental design and a difference-in-differences (DID) model, this study deeply dissects the influence of this digital place-based policy on inclusive green growth (IGG). The main finding indicates that the NDEIDPZ policy can significantly promote IGG. Mechanistic analysis reveals that promoting digital technological innovation, enhancing entrepreneurial activity, alleviating resource misallocation, and accelerating industrial structural upgrading constitute important mechanisms underlying the contribution of the NDEIDPZ policy to IGG. The effects of the NDEIDPZ policy are not uniform across cities, contributing more substantially to IGG in eastern cities, non-resource-based cities, and cities with relatively more developed digital economies. The spatial spillover analysis further demonstrates that the NDEIDPZ policy exerts positive spillovers to IGG in neighboring regions, while the magnitude of this spillover effect declines progressively with increasing geographical distance. These findings not only extend the existing literature on the effects of the NDEIDPZ policy by examining its implications for IGG, but also provide theoretical and empirical insights into how place-based policies can be designed and implemented to advance sustainable development goals.