How Does Digital Empowerment Enhance the Effectiveness of Low-Carbon City Pilots in Reducing Pollution and Carbon Emissions?

In the pursuit of high-quality economic development, addressing the challenge of high pollution and carbon emissions has become a critical issue. The rapid advancement of digital technology offers novel opportunities and tools to effectively mitigate these challenges. This study examines how digital technology empowerment can enhance the effectiveness of low-carbon city pilot (LCCP) policies in mitigating high pollution and carbon emissions, thereby improving green economic efficiency (GEE), using data from 283 Chinese cities between 2006 and 2021. The method adopted is a DID framework tailored for settings with staggered treatment adoption. Our analysis focuses on the low-carbon city pilot initiative, examining its consequences and how it interacts with digital technology. The results indicate that (1) the LCCP policy significantly promotes green economic efficiency; (2) digital technology empowerment demonstrates a substantial positive moderating impact upon the policy outcome, thus considerably reinforcing low-emission pilot policies’ improvement effect on GEE; (3) there are regional variations in the policy effectiveness, with the eastern region showing the most pronounced improvement, followed by the central region, while the western region exhibits a relatively lower response. This study provides theoretical and empirical support for further integrating digital technology with low-carbon policies and advancing urban green and high-quality development.