Has ICT Contributed to Increased Carbon Productivity in Industry?

Abstract

Enhancing industrial carbon productivity is the key to China's sustainable economic development. Along with the application and development of new-generation network information technologies such as big data, Internet of Things, cloud computing, etc., information communication technology (ICT) has become an essential means to improve national innovation, productivity and strengthen industrial competitiveness, and plays a crucial role in promoting industrial carbon productivity enhancement. Based on China's interprovincial panel data from 2009-2017, this study measured the ICT level through Projection Pursuit improved by an accelerated genetic algorithm and adopted a non-linear threshold regression model to investigate the non-linear impact and its Spatio-temporal heterogeneity of ICT on China's industrial carbon productivity improvement from the perspective of science and technology(S&T) human capital accumulation. The study shows that the overall level of ICT in China is high. There is a digital divide between regions; in general, ICT plays a positive role in enhancing industrial carbon productivity, but there are significant heterogeneous threshold characteristics of science and technology human capital accumulation accumulation. Once the accumulation of science and technology human resource accumulation breaks through the critical scale, the positive effect of ICT on industrial carbon productivity will gradually appear and show a strengthening trend. The temporal and spatial distribution of the threshold for accumulating science and technology human capital accumulation is different.

Keywords

• Information and communication technology
• industrial carbon productivity
• science and technology human resource accumulation
• threshold effect
• heterogeneity