How do Green Digital Economy Policies Promote Inclusive Green Growth in Cities? An Empirical Study from the Perspective of Government and Public Environmental Participation

This paper takes China's green digital economy pilot policies as the research object and uses the Difference-in-Differences (DID) method to analyze their impact mechanism on inclusive green growth in cities. The study finds that these policies significantly promote high-quality urban development by enhancing government environmental participation and public environmental engagement, and there is an obvious spatial spillover effect, providing important policy implications for urban low-carbon transformation.

Under the dual pressures of global climate change and sustainable development goals, urban green transformation has become a core issue. Since 2015, China has established green digital economy pilot cities in batches to explore new paths for digital technology to empower environmental governance, emphasizing the reconstruction of government and public participation models in environmental governance to achieve synergistic economic and environmental benefits. The traditional growth model faces the dilemma of the 'Environmental Kuznets Curve'. How to achieve inclusive green growth that balances economic growth, environmental protection, and social equity in the wave of digital economy is a focus of academic and policy circles.

This study uses the Difference-in-Differences (DID) method to construct a quasi-natural experiment framework. Taking green digital economy pilot cities as the treatment group, it identifies causal effects by comparing the trajectories of pilot and non-pilot cities before and after policy implementation, using policy exogeneity to avoid endogeneity issues, and multi-period DID to capture dynamic effects. The sample covers hundreds of cities, with a time span including years before and after the pilot. Variable measurement constructs a multi-dimensional inclusive green growth indicator system, integrating dimensions such as economic growth quality, resource efficiency, environmental improvement, and social inclusion, breaking through the limitations of single indicators.

Main Effect: Significant Promotion of High-Quality Development

The empirical results show that the policy has a significant positive impact on the inclusive green growth of pilot cities. The pilot cities outperform non-pilot cities in terms of reduced GDP energy consumption, improved air quality, and increased proportion of green industries, and these results remain robust in various robustness tests.

Mechanism Analysis: Synergistic Effect of Dual-Drive

Government Environmental Participation Mechanism: Digital technology empowers government environmental governance. Through big data monitoring, intelligent supervision platforms, etc., it improves decision-making scientificity and execution efficiency. The pilot cities have improved environmental response speed, information transparency, and law enforcement precision, forming a positive cycle of "digital technology—government capacity—environmental performance". Public Environmental Participation Mechanism: Digital platforms lower the threshold for public participation. Through petition apps, reporting mini-programs, etc., the public is transformed from bystanders to participants. The pilot cities have seen increased satisfaction with complaint handling, volunteer participation rates, and green consumption popularity, forming a pattern of multi-stakeholder co-governance.

The study finds that the policy has a significant spatial spillover effect: the dividends of pilot cities radiate to the surrounding 500-kilometer area, forming a positive driving effect, which attenuates as the distance increases. The formation mechanisms include technology spillover (green digital technology transfer), industrial linkage (green industrial chain division), and institutional learning (surrounding cities learning from pilot experiences), providing theoretical support for regional green collaborative development.

There are significant heterogeneities in policy effects among different types of cities:

• City Size: Medium and large cities have more significant effects due to well-developed digital infrastructure and abundant governance resources;
• Industrial Characteristics: Cities with a good traditional industrial foundation achieve a win-win situation of industrial upgrading and environmental improvement through transformation;
• Digital Foundation: Cities with a high original digitalization level apply technology to environmental governance scenarios more quickly. This suggests that policies need to be adapted to local conditions and avoid a "one-size-fits-all" approach.

Policy Implications

1. Digital Technology Empowerment: Accelerate the construction of new infrastructure such as environmental perception networks and data sharing platforms;
2. Multi-Stakeholder Co-Governance Pattern: Transform the government into a platform-based governance hub and activate the participation of multiple subjects;
3. Regional Collaborative Diffusion: Establish mechanisms for technology transfer, talent exchange, and institutional learning to amplify spillover effects;
4. Adaptation to Local Conditions: Design differentiated transformation paths for different types of cities.

Future Prospects

New-generation digital technologies (AI, blockchain, IoT) will deepen the transformation of urban environmental governance. Future research needs to focus on issues such as the interaction between technology and institutional innovation, and the balance between efficiency and equity. This study provides a reference framework for exploration.