Improving health and reducing health inequality: An innovation of digitalization?

RATIONALE: The association between digitalization and individual health has attracted increasing attention from both scholars and policymakers. Existing research, however, has not agreed on whether digitization can improve health or reduce health inequality. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to clarify whether and how the development of digitalization may be related to health and health disparities. METHODS: We rely on China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) surveys from 2012 to 2018 to obtain a sample of 82,471 observations to explore the impact of digitalization on self-rated health and health inequality and its transmission mechanisms. The hypotheses are tested by Ordinary Least Squares Modeling. RESULTS: As expected, digitalization is significantly and positively correlated with self-rated health. Furthermore, the development of digitalization has led to a notable decrease in health inequality. The influencing mechanisms of digitalization include income, healthcare consumption and health behaviors. Both dimensions of digitalization-internet development and digital finance-generate significant effects and the effects of internet development are greater. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first to systematically investigate the impact of digitalization development on health and health inequality. Our findings provide evidence for the health promotion theory by clarifying the benefits of digitalization in improving residents' health and reducing health inequality. Therefore, utilizing the tools of digitalization efficiently could be a focus of policymakers aiming to accomplish the SDGs' health targets.

How ICT capital affects the spatial correlation of energy consumption-a new perspective based on spatially correlation network.

ICT has significantly transformed the traditional energy production and service methods, changed the correlation characteristics of energy consumption network, and contributed to the establishment of cross-regional, open, and synergistic energy ecological networks. In this paper, social network analysis (SNA), dynamic SYS-GMM model, and mediating effects model are employed to deliberate on the mechanism of ICT capital's influence on the spatial correlation of energy consumption from 2000 to 2019. Firstly, this study employs an enhanced gravity model to precisely delineate the spatial correlation network of energy consumption in China, further applies the SNA to analyze the network structural characteristics, and then uses the econometric model to investigate the influence mechanism and heterogeneity of ICT capital on the spatial correlation of energy consumption. The study demonstrates a progressive spatial correlation in energy consumption in China, with eastern provinces emerge as the center of the network, assuming the position of the "dominant player." Conversely, the central provinces act as the "bridge," and western provinces are positioned at the periphery, referred to as the "edge" of the network. ICT capital contributes to improving the energy consumption spatial correlation, mainly by stimulating green technology innovation, promoting industrial structure optimization, accelerating human capital accumulation, and reducing income inequality. As ICT capital expands, the eastern region becomes more preeminent as a network hub for energy consumption, the central region increases its dominance slightly, and the western region's marginal position does not change significantly. Furthermore, the presence of ICT capital significantly enhances the intensity of energy consumption spatial correlation more prominently for low-carbon pilot areas and high Internet level areas. This study guides provinces to fully utilize ICT capital to reach collaborative energy-saving goals, and promotes the breaking down of regional competitive barriers in energy systems to build cooperative energy conservation ecological networks.

The impact of income inequity on energy consumption: The moderating role of digitalization.

Income inequity and energy consumption have become important issues for sustainable development, and digitalization offers unlimited potential for bridging the income gap and decreasing energy consumption. Based on an international perspective, we confirm the impact of income inequality on energy consumption in 108 countries from 2000 to 2019 and then explore the moderating and threshold effects of digitalization on the impact of income inequality on energy consumption. The empirical results indicate that income inequality causes a surge in energy consumption, and the dynamic SYS-GMM results suggest that for every 1 unit increase in income inequality, energy consumption increases by 0.003 unit. The moderating effect suggests that digitalization helps mitigate the impact of a 3.654% surge in energy consumption caused by income inequality. In comparison, digitalization has a significant moderating effect on energy consumption in middle- and high-income countries (Europe, the Americas, and the Asia-Pacific region), and the moderating effect of digitalization is effective in both free and non-free economies. The dynamic SYS-GMM threshold panel models reveal a non-linear relationship between income inequality and energy consumption affected by digitalization. This provides international evidence that reveals the underlying mechanisms of digitalization, income inequality, and energy consumption. It will better guide countries in harnessing digital dividends to overcome the twin dilemmas of the income gap and energy poverty.

Does environmental regulation enhance firm's position in dual value chain? An analysis based on environmental information disclosure.

Climbing the dual value chain (DVC) of parallel development in global and domestic value chains is an important channel to get rid of bottom solidification. Based on the data of international input-output tables after embedding provinces and decomposing value-added flow during 2003-2012, this article provides measurement for downstream or upstream embedding and division position indexes of A-listed firms. Then, theoretical framework of environmental regulation affecting DVC embeddedness is constructed, and the Environmental Information Disclosure (EID) trial implemented in 2008 is regarded as a quasi-natural experiment. The results show that EID enhances corporate division position in DVC by weakening downstream embeddedness and increasing upstream embeddedness, domestic firms are gradually transforming from low-end manufacturers to high-end designers. The effect works with a year lag in downstream embeddedness and lags 2 years in others. Heterogeneity analysis confirms that enhancement of division position is more sensitive in resource-rich cities with high marketization or labor-intensive firms and manufacturing or service sectors. Besides, we find that environmental regulation such as EID induces technological innovation for process upgrade, product improvement for quality upgrade and allocation optimization for function upgrade to transform the role and degree of firms embedding DVC.

Shared prosperity, energy-saving, and emission-reduction: Can ICT capital achieve a "win-win-win" situation?

The continuous innovation of information and communication technology (ICT) provides new opportunities for the synergistic development of shared prosperity, energy-saving, and emission-reduction. Based on Chinese provincial data from 2000 to 2019, we analyzed the impact of income inequality on energy consumption and carbon emissions from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, focusing on the impact mechanism, moderating effect, and threshold effect of ICT capital on the relationship between income inequality and energy consumption and carbon emissions. The study finds that income inequality increases energy consumption and carbon emissions, whereas regardless of whether it is hardware, software, or communication capital, ICT capital effectively mitigates the growth of energy consumption and carbon emissions caused by income inequality, with a significant inhibitory effect. Furthermore, ICT capital has a stronger moderating effect on energy consumption and carbon emissions in urban and developed eastern region. Notably, the effect of income inequality on the growth of energy consumption and carbon emissions diminishes non-linearly with increasing ICT capital. This study confirms that an increase in ICT capital contributes to the "win-win-win" situation of shared prosperity, energy-saving, and emission-reduction, providing useful empirical guidance for China and similar countries to fully utilize ICT capital in the digital economy.

Spatial effect analysis of heterogeneous green technology innovations on pollution emission reduction: evidence from China's power industry.

Based on the provincial panel dataset of the power industry in China from 1997 to 2020, this study employed the dynamic spatial Durbin model (SDM) to investigate the spatial effects of heterogeneous green technology innovations (GTIs) of the power industry chain-clean energy GTIs (GTI1), fossil-fueled GTIs (GTI2), energy-saving GTIs (GTI3), and power transmission technology innovations (GTI4)-on three pollution emission reduction: SO2, solid waste (SW), and waste water (WW). The empirical results revealed that three pollution emissions showed "path dependent" and "snowball effects." GTI1, GTI2, and GTI3 reduced local SO2 and SW emissions, while GTI2 and GTI4 had no obvious reduction effects on WW emissions. Different GTIs had the same spatial "symbiotic effects" on SO2 emission reduction in the short term, showing positive spatial spillover reduction effects. Finally, it is of great significance to make full use of the positive spatial spillover effects of GTIs to promote the regional collaborative linkage of pollutant governance in the power industry.

Factor reallocation and cost pass-through under the carbon emission trading policy: Evidence from Chinese metal industrial chain.

Piloted in 2013, the Carbon Emission Trading (CET) policy is the most practical tool for emission reduction in China, however, midstream firms increase capital investment to cope with compliance costs, resulting in more expensive intermediate commodities that may hurt export benefits of industrial chain terminal. Based on the A-shared listed firms of Chinese metal industrial chain during 2008-2018, this paper applies the difference-in-difference model to explore the effects of CET on chain reactions of corporate activities. After a set of robustness tests, the results show that midstream firms accelerate capital deepening in response to CET and become more capital-intensive, but gain losses of outputs both in revenue and in quantity, accompanying cost pass-through to downstream firms, which are all contributed by the external pressure imposed by stakeholders and internal incentive from senior managers. Then, affected by price fluctuation in markets of production factors and carbon-intensive commodities, CET increases the cleanliness standards of midstream firms and promote their export benefits immediately, and cost pass-through generates more expensive intermediate products and results in export contraction of downstream firms, but precision machine manufacturing has seen export growth, as their products are more sensitive to technological breakthroughs than material costs.

Does digital investment affect carbon efficiency? Spatial effect and mechanism discussion.

Digitalization supported by ICT capital is a core weapon for decoupling economic growth from carbon emissions. This research innovatively calculates ICT capital in China from 2001 to 2018 and explores how ICT capital affects carbon emission efficiency and its spatial spillover effects from a digital investment perspective. The empirical results prove that ICT capital contributes to improvement of carbon emission efficiency, pure technical efficiency, scale efficiency and technological progress. Furthermore, interestingly, ICT communication capital was found to have the strongest effect on improving carbon emission efficiency, while ICT hardware capital and software capital have a weaker effect. The spatial effect demonstrates that ICT capital not only helps improve the local carbon emission efficiency but also has spatial spillovers to the surrounding areas and has the most prominent effect on the carbon emission efficiency of the central region. The mediation tests illustrate that ICT capital improves carbon emission efficiency by promoting technological innovation, alleviating industrial structure distortions, enhancing resource allocation efficiency and accelerating human capital accumulation. These findings have important policy guiding significance for the region to stimulate the potential of ICT capital and facilitate the low-carbon transformation of the economy.