Can digital industrialization promote energy conservation development in China? Empirical evidence based on national...

Digital industrialization represented by big data provides substantial support for the high-quality development of the digital economy, but its impact on urban energy conservation development requires further research. To this end, based on the panel data of Chinese cities from 2010 to 2019 and taking the establishment of the national big data comprehensive pilot zone (NBDCPZ) as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper explores the impact, mechanism, and spatial spillover effect of digital industrialization represented by big data on urban energy conservation development using the Difference-in-Differences (DID) method. The results show that digital industrialization can help achieve urban energy conservation development, which still holds after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis reveals that digital industrialization impacts urban energy conservation development by driving industrial sector output growth, promoting industrial upgrading, stimulating green technology innovation, and alleviating resource misallocation. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the energy conservation effect of digital industrialization is more significant in the central region, intra-regional demonstration comprehensive pilot zones, large cities, non-resource-based cities, and high-level digital infrastructure cities. Additionally, digital industrialization can promote energy conservation development in neighboring areas through spatial spillover effect. This paper enriches the theoretical framework concerning the relationship between digital industrialization and energy conservation development. The findings have significant implications for achieving the coordinated development of digitalization and conservation.