The Impact of Digital Enterprise Agglomeration on Carbon Intensity: A Study Based on the Extended Spatial STIRPAT Model

Abstract

The digital economy has broken the physical space limit, reshaped factor input ratios, and accelerated factor mobility, which drives carbon reduction and social sustainability. Digital enterprise agglomeration is becoming the new tendency and a significant spatial feature for digital economy development. This work aimed to study the impact of digital enterprise agglomeration on carbon intensity. This study first proposed an extended spatial stochastic IPAT (STIRPAT) theoretical framework and regarded digital enterprise agglomeration as a technology factor. Secondly, by building a dataset with 7,902,050 digital enterprises and using the distance-based Duranton and Overman index, this study evaluated the digital enterprise agglomeration of 278 cities from 2007 to 2017 in China. Thirdly, by matching micro digital enterprise data and macro city data, this study employed spatial Durbin, mediating, and moderating effects models to test the impact and mechanism of digital enterprise agglomeration on carbon intensity. There are four main findings: (1) There is a negative “U-shaped” correlation between digital enterprise agglomeration and local and neighboring cities’ carbon intensities, and the impact of neighboring digital enterprise agglomeration on local carbon intensity is more significant than the effect of regional digital enterprise agglomeration on local carbon intensity. (2) The impact of digital enterprise agglomeration on carbon intensity shows great differences under spatial, resource, industrial, and financial heterogeneity. (3) Digital enterprise agglomeration indirectly impacts carbon intensity in two ways: the green technology innovation effect and the industry structure rationalization effect. (4) Human capital enhances the role of digital enterprise agglomeration in reducing carbon intensity, whereas government intervention weakens the effect of digital enterprise agglomeration in decreasing carbon intensity. This paper suggests that digital enterprise agglomeration strategies should be dynamically adjusted based on local digital economy development and resource conditions.