Search Results (43)

Faced with industrial transformation and environmental constraints, exploring the synergistic transition towards digitalisation and greening in manufacturing is of great significance. Using panel data from 30 Chinese provinces (2011–2023), this paper employs the modified distance synergy model, XGBoost, and PVAR to measure the synergistic transition level, identify key characteristics, and reveal regional heterogeneity. The findings show that: (1) The synergistic level has risen steadily, forming a pattern of “East leading, Central catching up, West stable, Northeast slowing”. (2) Digital content resources, internet address resources, the share of high-tech new product revenue, and environmental protection expenditure are key characteristics. (3) Regional heterogeneity is evident: the Northeast exhibits bidirectional synergy; the East and West show short-term digitalisation promoting greening and long-term greening driving digitalisation; the Central region shows short-term suppression of digitalisation by greening, with no significant reverse effect. These findings provide empirical evidence for advancing digital-green synergy and regional high-quality development. Full article

The key path to achieving global sustainable development is a low-carbon economy, which is of great significance for implementing the United Nations’ 2030 SDGs 7, 11, 12, and 13. Utilizing provincial panel data of 30 Chinese provinces spanning 2006–2024, this study explores the influencing pathways and intrinsic mechanisms of urban-rural integration (abbreviated as U-R integration) toward green low-carbon sustainable growth. Empirical results demonstrate that U-R integration prominently boosts regional low-carbon growth, and such conclusions pass multiple reliability verification procedures. Heterogeneity assessments demonstrate that the impact is most pronounced in eastern zones, whereas it proves insignificant or even adverse in central, western, and northeastern locales. The influence of U-R integration is notably stronger in less urbanized districts relative to highly urbanized ones. Mechanism analysis suggests that energy structure transformation and industrial structure transformation play an intermediary role. Further extended analysis shows that Internet development features a unique threshold characteristic; once the threshold is exceeded, it markedly strengthens the catalytic role of U-R integration. Furthermore, spatial spillover estimates reveal that U-R integration drives local low-carbon progress while delivering remarkable positive externalities to adjacent provinces. Accordingly, this paper proposes adopting region-specific strategies, reinforcing institutional arrangements and factor mobility support for central, western, and northeastern areas, and advancing U-R integration in line with local realities. Full article

This paper utilizes panel data of Chinese A-share listed manufacturing firms from 2006 to 2022 and measures regional digital infrastructure by the number of internet broadband access ports per capita. It systematically examines the moderating role of digital infrastructure in the relationship between labor protection policies and firms’ labor productivity. The findings are as follows: (1) Digital infrastructure exhibits a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the Labor Contract Law and firms’ labor productivity. This conclusion remains generally robust across multiple robustness tests and endogeneity treatments, and the direction of the results remains consistent after applying an instrumental variable approach to alleviate endogeneity concerns. (2) The digital transformation channel exhibits a negative relationship, indicating that compliance pressure associated with the institutional reform generates a short-term “crowding-out effect” on firms’ digital investment; the human capital channel shows a positive relationship, indicating that digital infrastructure strengthens the institutional effect by improving the level of urban human capital. (3) The moderating effect is particularly pronounced in cities with strong digital industry foundations, abundant fiscal resources, and firms that have not received government digital subsidies. These results provide empirical support for optimizing the supporting environment of labor protection policies, accelerating digital infrastructure development, and enhancing enterprise adaptability to institutional changes. Full article

This article compares selected fire safety regulatory systems in Japan, China, the United States, and the EU/UK, interpreted through the lens of responsive architecture and the implementation of digital technologies—building information modelling (BIM), digital twins (DTs), artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT). The study adopts a qualitative approach based on a structured review of legal acts, technical standards, public-sector reports, and the scientific and professional literature, organised using a common analytical framework. First, the analysis identifies shared foundations across regimes: the primacy of life safety, mandatory detection and alarm functions, fire compartmentation, requirements for protected means of exit, and the increasing importance of documenting the operational status of protection measures. Then, it contrasts key differences, including the permissibility of performance-based design (PBD), the degree to which digital documentation is formally recognised, organisational enforcement models, and cybersecurity approaches for integrated fire alarm/voice alarm/building management/IoT ecosystems. Japan and selected Chinese cities combine stringent requirements with openness to dynamic solutions and urban-scale data platforms. The USA relies on a decentralised code-based ecosystem with a strong role for professional and industry bodies, while the EU/UK continues to strengthen harmonised standards and digital building registers, reinforced by lessons after the Grenfell Tower fire. Against this background, Poland is discussed as broadly aligned in goals and baseline technical requirements yet lagging behind in implementing PBD pathways, digital registers, formal BIM/DT integration, and minimum cybersecurity requirements. The proposed directions for change aim to create a more predictable regulatory and technical framework for the development of responsive architecture and dynamic fire safety systems in Poland. The study contributes to the sustainability literature by framing regulatory readiness for digital fire safety as a lifecycle resilience strategy, directly relevant to safe, resource-efficient, and inclusive built environments. Full article

Unlike traditional research that assumes uniform development patterns or uses subjective quantile or geographic divisions, this study employs a finite mixture model to endogenously cluster different regions of China into distinct development patterns based on the similarity of their conditional distributions. Using a coupling coordination degree model to measure the synergistic development level of digital finance and green finance across 30 Chinese provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) from 2012 to 2022, it investigates the driving factors. The results show: (1) Synergistic development between digital finance and green finance exhibits an overall upward trend with significant heterogeneity. Development patterns can be categorized as low-level, medium-level, and high-level. Economic development helps explain the formation of these growth patterns. (2) Marketization level promotes synergistic development across all patterns. However, the driving roles of traditional financial development level, data factorization level, human capital, traditional technological level, digital technological level, industrial structure, government intervention, and internet development level vary across different stages and patterns. (3) In total, 28 regions experienced pattern transitions in their synergistic development paths, which can be classified into leading, normal, and lagging development paths. The key finding of this study lies in uncovering the imbalanced development of digital finance and green finance synergy in parts of China. It provides targeted policy recommendations for synergistic development across regions and offers references for achieving high-quality economic development. Full article

High-end manufacturing supply chains are increasingly exposed to disruption risks and environmental uncertainty, yet how Industrial Internet (II) empowerment builds supply chain resilience (SCR) and when such benefits are most pronounced remain unclear. Grounded in the resource-based view and ambidextrous innovation logic, this study investigates whether II empowerment—captured by connectivity capability (CC), integration capability (IC), and analytics capability (AC)—enhances SCR through supply chain collaborative innovation (SCCI), including supply chain breakthrough innovation (SCBI) and supply chain incremental innovation (SCII), and whether environmental uncertainty (EU) conditions these relationships. Survey data from 293 Chinese high-end manufacturing firms were analyzed using structural equation modeling and bootstrapped mediation tests, supplemented by moderated regression analysis. The results indicate that CC, IC, and AC all directly and positively affect SCR. CC and AC significantly promote SCBI, whereas the effect of IC on SCBI is not significant; meanwhile, CC, IC, and AC all significantly foster SCII. Both SCBI and SCII are positively associated with SCR. SCBI mediates the effects of CC and AC (but not IC) on SCR, while SCII mediates the effects of all three II dimensions. Furthermore, EU strengthens the impacts of CC, AC, SCBI, and SCII on SCR, whereas the IC × EU interaction is not significant. These findings clarify the innovation-based mechanisms and boundary conditions of II-enabled resilience and offer actionable implications for high-end manufacturers seeking resilient supply chains under uncertainty. Full article

Smallholder farmers in developing countries often face barriers to market participation due to information asymmetry and limited access to marketing channels. This study investigates the impact of internet technology on farmers’ agricultural sales and its heterogeneity, using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) covering 14,577 agricultural households. Propensity score matching and unconditional quantile regression are employed for empirical analysis. The results show that (1) internet adoption significantly improves agricultural sales performance, increasing average sales output by 4680 CNY (Chinese Yuan, the official currency of China); (2) the effects of internet adoption are heterogeneous across industry types, education level, income level, social ties, and internet access devices; (3) the marginal impact of internet use grows with higher sales levels, with the strongest effect observed at the 95% quantile. This study highlights the impact of rural internet technology on increasing market transaction efficiency. Full article

Government policies and market forces have created new possibilities for wage growth in the logistics industry, which can reshape the development direction and labor reward of enterprises. The inclusive financial policy implemented by the Chinese government is effective, and the inputs of inclusive finance can affect the intelligent and low-carbon operations, the technical economic benefits and labor productivity in the logistics industry, thereby promoting wage growth. Meanwhile, the government-led industrial structure transformation and transportation infrastructure have brought a large number of new workers, transport individuals and enterprises into the logistics industry, which intensify the homogeneous service competition of enterprises, thereby hampering wage growth. In the market force, with the scale expansion of Internet access and logistics delivery vehicles and freight volume, the scale effects may enhance the wage level in the logistics industry. In addition, the moderating effect between policy and market forces can also confirm the existence of a positive spillover effect. The heterogeneity of wage growth varies across the eastern, central and western regions, as well as between the northern and southern regions. These findings highlight the importance of promoting the growth of labor wage income by policy implementation in inclusive finance, preferential measures on agricultural product logistics, integrated operation in the manufacturing and logistics field and the Belt and Road Initiative. Full article

Innovative behavior is essential for maintaining an organization’s competitive edge. This study aimed to investigate the impact of job crafting on innovative behavior, focusing on the mediating role of organizational commitment and the moderating effect of psychological ownership. It also explored how the moderating effect of psychological ownership varied between artificial intelligence (AI) and non-AI departments. Data were collected from 457 employees in China’s Internet industry. The results reveal that organizational commitment mediates the relationship between job crafting and innovative behavior. Furthermore, psychological ownership significantly moderates this relationship, with notable differences between AI and non-AI departments. Notably, the mediating role of organizational commitment in the connection between job crafting and innovative behavior is influenced by psychological ownership. These findings underscore the key roles of job crafting, organizational commitment, and psychological ownership in fostering innovative behavior and supporting organizational growth. They also highlight the importance of strategically managing psychological ownership across different departmental contexts to enhance organizational commitment and promote employee innovation. Full article

Relying on information technologies such as the Internet, big data, and cloud computing, smart cities (SC) fully integrate urban resources, constantly strengthen the ability of urban economic systems, infrastructure systems, ecosystems, social systems, institutional systems, and other systems to withstand disaster disturbance and external risk shocks, and promote urban resilience (UR) construction. This study uses panel data from 254 prefecture-level cities in China from 2009 to 2021, and employs a multiperiod difference-in-differences method to examine the direct and heterogeneous effects of SC on UR. After a series of empirical tests, this study obtains the following results: (1) SC have a significant impact on the improvement of UR, which objectively demonstrates the reciprocity between SC and the level of UR construction, providing data support for promoting the in-depth practice of SC. (2) From the mechanism test of the impact of SC on UR, urban land green utilization efficiency and industrial structure transformation are intermediate mechanisms through which SC affect the improvement of UR. In addition, public environmental attention (PEA) has a positive regulatory effect on SC and UR, that is, PEA strengthens the role of SC in improving UR. (3) From the heterogeneity of urban characteristics that affect UR, SC have a more significant effect on improving UR in eastern cities and non-resource-based cities. This study provides new ideas for studying UR and provides useful insights for promoting SC construction and enhancing UR. This study proposes that the government should continue to promote the intelligent construction of Chinese cities, advance the industrial structure and improve the green land utilization efficiency, and strengthen their positive impact on UR. Full article

Green innovation, which promotes the coordinated development of the economy and ecology, serves as a critical means to achieve enterprises’ green transformation. Against the backdrop of the Internet era, retail investors, as an important supervisory group for enterprises, can generate online public opinion through interactive exchanges on social media platforms. This raises the question: Can such public opinion rooted in social media influence enterprises’ green innovation behaviors? To address this, this study uses data from Chinese A-share listed enterprises in heavily polluting industries on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2008–2021, comprising a total sample size of 8755, and employs ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models to empirically examine the relationship between retail investors’ social media interactions and enterprise green innovation. The findings reveal that interactive discussions by retail investors on social media significantly enhance enterprises’ green innovation levels. Mechanism tests show that social media interactions among these investors strengthen enterprises’ environmental awareness and alleviate their financing constraints, thereby promoting green innovation. Moderation effect tests indicate that the quality of social media information interaction and public opinion sentiment positively moderate the relationship between retail’s social media interactions and enterprise green innovation. Heterogeneity tests further show that the positive effect of retail’s social media interactions on enterprise green innovation is more pronounced in regions with stronger environmental information regulation and stronger investor protection. The conclusions of this study not only enrich research on the relationship between retail investors’ social media supervision and enterprises’ behavioral decision-making but also extend the literature on the influencing factors of enterprise green innovation from the perspective of public governance. These findings hold important implications for enterprises’ green transformation practices under the “double carbon” goals and provide valuable insights for corporate governance in the era of the digital economy. Full article

Construction machinery operations are intrinsically linked to critical societal challenges, including safety risks and carbon emissions. In response to the high incidence of fatal accidents during installation and dismantling phases, the Chinese government has officially promoted integrated installation–dismantling services to enhance construction safety since 2023. However, the economic viability of this policy for leasing companies remains largely underexplored. To address this gap, this paper develops a leasing-oriented closed-loop construction machinery supply chain model that incorporates integrated installation–dismantling services under an industrial internet platform. The study first compares and analyzes the product leasing demand, installation and dismantling demand, and supply chain profits under both centralized and decentralized decision-making scenarios. Based on these analyses, a profit–cost sharing joint contract is designed to coordinate the supply chain. Furthermore, the interrelationships among key parameters are examined through a sensitivity analysis and numerical simulation. The results reveal that enhancing leasing information services increases both the demand for construction machinery and the platform’s operating costs. These costs are positively correlated with the product’s selling price, leading to higher purchasing costs for lessees. Similarly, improving information services for installation and dismantling raises the platform’s operating costs and enhances service levels, which in turn increases installation and dismantling costs for lessees. The findings demonstrate that within a certain range of cost-sharing and leasing-sharing proportional coefficients, the joint contract enables the supply chain to achieve Pareto optimization. This approach simultaneously alleviates economic pressure on lessees, improves construction safety, and promotes the integration of installation and dismantling services. Full article

The burgeoning digital economy in China serves as a significant impetus for extensive economic growth across the nation. However, regional development within China remains imbalanced, and the issue of the digital divide cannot be overlooked. This paper is dedicated to examining the effect of the digital economy on the aggregate economic growth of China, along with a heterogeneity analysis. Using Chinese province-level data during the period of full entry into the mobile Internet era (2014–2022), this study first constructs a digital economic development index system. Using the entropy method, it calculates the digital economic index for 30 provinces in China during the 2014–2022 period. Subsequently, a panel regression model is utilized to explore how the digital economy impacts economic growth. Ultimately, the Durbin model gauges the digital economy’s spatial impact on economic expansion in China. The key findings are as follows: (1) The burgeoning digital economy in China has instigated substantial expansion of the national economy. However, its impact on economic growth gradually decreases from the eastern to the western regions. (2) China reveals a notable spatial relationship linking its digital economy and economic expansion. A distinct positive spatial relationship exists between the two. Additionally, the digital economy of China presents a positive spatial spillover effect regarding economic growth. The strongest manifestation of this effect is detected in the eastern region, trailed by the central region, and the western region displays the feeblest effect. Based on these findings, it is clear the digital economy plays a pivotal role in China’s economic growth. To expedite the high-quality development of the digital economy, the government could take additional steps. Specifically, it could enhance the construction of infrastructure related to the digital economy and increase investment in scientific and technological innovation resources. Enterprises can consider digital transformation to achieve the digital development of industries. In addition, considering the existence of the spatial spillover effect, the digital divide can be bridged and regional imbalances alleviated by enhancing coordinated regional development. Full article

The logistics industry is essential to global economic development but continues to grapple with challenges related to quality improvement, cost reduction, and efficiency enhancement. Addressing these issues is crucial for promoting high-quality growth within the sector. The emergence of intelligent logistics—leveraging automation, data analytics, and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies—offers a promising approach to transforming traditional logistics operations. This study develops a theoretical framework that integrates these intelligent logistics components to investigate their mechanisms and limitations in influencing logistics performance. Using an empirical analysis of Chinese provincial panel data, we identify significant disparities in logistics industry performance across the provinces, with most regions exhibiting an initial improvement followed by a subsequent decline. Our findings reveal a notable spatial interaction effect between intelligent logistics and logistics performance, indicating that intelligent logistics substantially enhance performance. However, the impact varies by region: it significantly promotes performance in the eastern and western regions but has a limited effect in the central and northeastern regions, potentially due to distortions in production factors and other regional specificities. Additionally, the degree of openness to the outside world positively influences logistics performance in the western region. The proposed mechanisms are validated in all regions except the eastern region. This study provides valuable insights for policymakers on leveraging intelligent logistics to improve logistics industry performance, highlighting the need for region-specific strategies to maximize the benefits of intelligent logistics technologies. Full article

The rapid development of the digital economy (DE) has provided innovative solutions for the transformation and upgrade of the construction industry. Leveraging technologies such as intelligent management, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence effectively enhances the construction industry’s green total factor productivity (GTFP). Based on data from 30 Chinese provinces spanning 2012 to 2022, this paper systematically investigates the mechanisms through which the DE influences the GTFP of the construction industry from multiple dimensions, including direct effects, indirect effects, and threshold effects. The findings reveal that the DE significantly promotes the improvement of GTFP in the construction industry. The DE indirectly enhances GTFP through technological innovation and environmental regulation, with the mediating effect of technological innovation being more pronounced. Urbanization exhibits a significant single-threshold effect in moderating the relationship between the DE and GTFP, with the impact of the DE on GTFP following a “U-shaped” trajectory. Full article