Search Results (42)

The existing research has rarely integrated within-province associations, interprovincial spatial linkages, and multidimensional heterogeneity when examining how digitalization is related to increasing household consumption. Using a balanced panel of 30 provincial-level regions in China for 2011–2023, compiled from national and provincial statistical yearbooks (CSMAR) and the Peking University Digital Financial Inclusion Index, this study constructs a 0–1 digital economy development index with entropy-weighted TOPSIS. Two-way fixed effects estimate the average within-province relationship; global and local Moran’s I and a spatial Durbin model evaluate spatial dependence and decompose direct, indirect, and total effects. Panel quantile regressions and alternative spatial weight matrices serve as robustness checks, whereas instrumental variables and double/debiased machine learning provide supplementary identification evidence. Digital economy development is positively associated with consumption upgrading in the baseline model. Under economic distance weights, the direct, indirect, and total effects are all significantly positive, although their structure differs across consumption categories, urban and rural groups, regions, and temporal stages. The findings support combining digital infrastructure with service capacity, skills, consumer protection, and interprovincial governance while avoiding uniform policy prescriptions across regions. Full article

Green innovation is an important means of mitigating environmental pollution, improving production efficiency, and promoting high-quality economic development. Using prefecture-level city data and China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data from 2010 to 2022, this study applies the Super-SBM model to measure urban green innovation efficiency and examines its effects on residents’ consumption levels and household consumption structures. The results show that (1) green innovation efficiency significantly increases consumption among urban residents and urban households, whereas its effects on rural residents and rural households are not statistically significant; (2) green innovation efficiency significantly reduces the share of subsistence-oriented consumption while increasing the shares of housing, development-oriented, and tourism consumption, thereby promoting a shift in household expenditure from basic needs toward development- and enjoyment-oriented consumption; (3) wage income and housing debt constitute two distinct transmission channels. Higher wage income facilitates development- and enjoyment-oriented consumption, whereas housing debt increases the share of housing consumption and exerts a crowding-out effect on development-oriented and tourism consumption; and (4) green innovation efficiency has a more pronounced effect on development-oriented and tourism consumption among young and high-income households. For middle-aged and older households, as well as low-income households, the effects of green innovation are reflected more strongly in an increase in the share of housing consumption. The findings provide important empirical evidence that green innovation contributes to improving residents’ quality of life. Full article

Agrarian cultural landscapes depend not only on the symbolic value of place but also on the viability of the producers who sustain landscape-bearing practices. This study asks which indigenous rice value-chain pathway is most supportable in the near term under current production, post-harvest, market, and coordination conditions, and what this implies for conservation planning. Using the Pak Phanang Basin, Thailand, as an area-based case, the study integrates evidence from 52 indigenous rice-farming households in four subdistricts, farmer meetings and focus group discussions, value-chain actors, relevant agencies, spatial and documentary sources, and a consumer survey used as supplementary demand-side evidence. Seven value-chain pathways were compared qualitatively using six criteria: downstream demand or final use, quality requirements, post-harvest burden, investment needs, coordination burden, and producer readiness. The findings show that farmer participation remains concentrated in low-risk channels, especially household consumption and mill sales. Paddy rice for game fowl and native chicken feed emerged as the most territorially supportable near-term pathway because it showed the strongest practical fit among identifiable downstream buyers and final-use clarity, moderate quality requirements, manageable post-harvest and investment burdens, coordination requirements, and producer readiness. Its feasibility, however, depends on reducing post-harvest bottlenecks, improving aggregation, managing quality, and coordinating with downstream buyers. The study concludes that feasible value-chain upgrading should be planned as conservation-enabling support for custodian viability, rather than as a simple shift toward higher-value markets. Full article

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating data center construction and creating downstream implications for households. This study examines how AI-era data center costs (comprising construction, energy, water, grid upgrades, cooling, and lifecycle management) move through service supply chains and affect household prices in healthcare, transportation, education, banking, and commerce. It also considers the productivity and welfare benefits that AI may transmit. This study identifies four pass-through channels: utility-rate socialization of energy costs, cloud-platform pricing, sectoral pass-through from AI-adopting industries, and indirect effects through supply chains and labor markets. It introduces the AI-inflated net good basket, defined as transmitted cost minus transmitted benefit, to show how AI reshapes the overall net cost of household consumption rather than simply inflating individual prices. The study develops the AI Infrastructure Net Cost Pass-Through Model (AI-NCPM), a four-layer conceptual framework tracing net cost flows from data center investment to sectoral allocation and household outcomes. The model’s parameters are analytically specified but not empirically calibrated; numerical examples are illustrative rather than representing estimated effects. Its main contribution is an integrative framework linking cost pass-through, infrastructure cost socialization, two-sided platform allocation, environmental externalities, and household expenditure incidence within a single net-cost account. Because these effects originate in the design, construction, energy and cooling systems, and lifecycle operation of data centers, the analysis connects AI infrastructure economics to the built environment. The framework suggests that low-income, minority, rural, older adult, and disability-affected households may face disproportionate net burdens, as costs fall heavily on essential services while benefits accrue more readily to affluent and digitally connected households. Full article

Against the backdrop of the increasingly urgent global climate governance situation, carbon emission reduction has gone beyond the simple scope of environmental protection and become an import benchmark for measuring the quality and sustainability of economic and social development. Drawing on data from 233 prefecture-level cities in China over the period 2015–2024, this study investigates the impact of digital inclusive finance (DIF) on urban carbon emission intensity (CI). The findings indicate that DIF significantly mitigates the effect on CI. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that this mitigating effect is more pronounced in cities with higher initial CI. DIF also exerts a stronger influence on curbing CI in environmental protection cities and non-central cities. The results also confirm that industrial structure upgrading (ISU) and household consumption level (HCL) serve as mediating mechanisms in the causal pathways. Based on the above conclusions, this paper puts forward suggestions concerning the popularization and expanded coverage of DIF. The coordinated implementation of these suggestions helps DIF fully exert its bridging role between financial and environmental sustainability, providing robust instrumental support for achieving regional carbon emission reduction targets and comprehensively advancing the sustainable development of cities. Full article

Promoting the high-quality development of farmers’ specialized cooperatives and narrowing regional development gaps is critical for advancing China’s rural revitalization strategy. Based on provincial panel data covering 30 Chinese regions from 2015 to 2023, this paper constructs a five-dimensional evaluation index system including standardized operation, operational performance, service scope, driving effect, and industrial upgrading, and adopts the entropy weight method to quantify the comprehensive development level of cooperatives. By combining spatial autocorrelation, kernel density estimation, the Dagum Gini coefficient and the Geodetector model, this paper explores the spatio-temporal evolution, regional disparities and multi-factor coupled driving mechanism of cooperative development. The main findings are as follows: (1) While the total quantity of cooperatives keeps expanding nationwide, their overall development level presents an evolutionary feature of declining first and then rising; industrial upgrading gradually becomes a new growth engine, whereas operational performance and driving effect slip downward. (2) The spatial layout of cooperatives maintains a typical pyramid structure; high-value agglomeration shifts from the Yangtze River Delta to southeast coastal regions, and low-value clusters are persistently concentrated in Northeast China. (3) The overall Dagum Gini coefficient reflects widening-then-shrinking regional gaps, and intra-eastern provincial differences constitute the primary source of nationwide spatial divergence. (4) Household consumption and rural labor force stock serve as core driving factors; regional economic development, agricultural production efficiency, rural human capital and land resource allocation form a coupled driving system, and all explanatory variables show mutual enhancement effects without offsetting interactions. Targeted policy suggestions are put forward to realize balanced and high-quality development of farmers’ specialized cooperatives across China. Full article

The rapid expansion of the digital economy is reshaping consumption patterns and carries significant implications for environmental sustainability and low-carbon transition. Against the backdrop of global carbon neutrality goals and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), understanding how digitalization influences household consumption-based carbon emissions is considered critical for promoting sustainable consumption systems. Using five waves of balanced panel data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2014 to 2022, this study measures household carbon emissions based on the Consumer Lifestyle Approach (CLA) and constructs a multidimensional digitalization index covering digital access, usage, and cognition. Employing two-way fixed effects and chain mediation models, this study examines both the direct effects and underlying mechanisms linking digitalization and household carbon emissions. The results show that digitalization is significantly and positively associated with household carbon emissions, with notable heterogeneity across individuals, households, and regions. Mechanism analysis reveals that digitalization alleviates liquidity constraints and promotes consumption upgrading, forming a chain mediation pathway that drives emission growth. This study contributes to the literature by providing micro-level evidence on the environmental consequences of digitalization and by integrating behavioral mechanisms into the analysis of digital economy-environment interactions. It further offers policy insights for aligning digital transformation with low-carbon development and advancing sustainable consumption in the digital era. Full article

Background/Objectives: Rising incomes worldwide are reshaping dietary patterns and intensifying concern about the carbon impacts of household food consumption. This study examines how economic development influences food-related carbon emissions in China, with a focus on household food consumption behavior and dietary change. Methods: Using longitudinal household data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey covering 2004–2011, we apply a panel threshold regression model to identify nonlinear income effects on food-related carbon emissions. Results: Within the 2004–2011 sample, household income is positively associated with food-related emissions, but the marginal effect declines once income exceeds the estimated threshold. The baseline model identifies a single threshold at 6.5479 (95% confidence interval: [6.4965, 6.5917]), corresponding to 65,479 yuan in annual household income. The single-threshold test is significant at the 5% level (p = 0.035), and the adjusted R² is 0.243. Income growth significantly increases the consumption of greenhouse-gas-intensive foods and associated emissions among low-income households, whereas food consumption patterns among high-income households are comparatively more stable within the sample period. Conclusions: These findings indicate that rising income can intensify food-related carbon pressure during China’s dietary transition, particularly through dietary upgrading among low-income households, but they do not provide direct evidence that household food emissions will stabilize automatically over time. Full article

The expansion of the consumption of green agricultural products is a vital direction for transforming and upgrading food consumption for China’s residents. The development of the platform economy, based on the development of electronic information technology, achieved through changing business models, economic form, and, especially, the consumption habits and channels of residents, further improves the consumption potential of green agricultural products. This paper uses micro-questionnaire survey data from 424 green agricultural product consumers nationwide and utilizes the propensity score matching (PSM) model to explore the impact of the platform economy on residents’ consumption of green agricultural products. This study found that the platform economy can significantly promote residents’ consumption of green agricultural products. In particular, the positive effect is more significant for urban residents with higher household incomes. In addition, improving residents’ health awareness and value perception is conducive to motivating residents’ green agricultural product consumption. Therefore, this paper proposes suggestions, such as focusing on strengthening the construction of platform infrastructure in rural areas, promoting the development of platform economy in urban areas through innovative application platform technologies, and cultivating residents’ basic literacy for effective participation in the platform economy, to provide new channels and ideas for expanding the consumption of green agricultural products in China. Full article

Understanding how digital transformation shapes dietary behavior is essential for evaluating nutritional transitions in developing economies. However, the mechanisms through which the digital economy impacts dietary diversity remain insufficiently explored. This study provides new empirical evidence on how digitalization influences the dietary diversity of Chinese residents. Utilizing unbalanced panel data sourced from the China Nutrition and Health Survey (CHNS), we calculate provincial digital economy indices and estimate its effects through Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and mediating effect model. Baseline results state that the digital economy significantly improves dietary diversity. Mediating effects analyses reveal that the digital economy augments dietary diversity by boosting household income, deepening dietary awareness, and facilitating industry transformation and consumption upgrading. Moreover, heterogeneity analyses indicate that the synergistic effect between the digital economy and diet patterns varies significantly across urban–rural areas, education levels, and household living conditions. These findings offer valuable insights for other emerging economies undergoing similar digital and nutritional transitions. Full article

In response to global sustainability challenges, this study investigates how Digital New-Quality Productive Forces (DNQPF), which integrate digitalization with green innovation, contribute to Sustainable Industrial Structural Upgrading (SISU) in China. Using panel data from 30 provinces spanning 2011–2023, a multidimensional DNQPF index was constructed, and a comprehensive econometric framework was applied, including two-way fixed effects, mediation and moderation analyses, Hansen threshold models, and Spatial Durbin models. The results indicate that DNQPF significantly enhances SISU (β = 0.291, p < 0.01), with household consumption upgrading serving as the key mediating channel. Regional heterogeneity is evident: Eastern provinces show strong effects (β = 0.295, p < 0.01) and central provinces exhibit catch-up potential (β = 0.467, p < 0.10), while the Western and Northeastern regions display insignificant effects due to digital infrastructure disparities. The threshold effects reveal diminishing returns beyond a DNQPF level of 0.239 (coefficient decline from 0.518 to 0.323, p < 0.01), a marketization level of 6.181, and an innovation level of 9.520. Spatial analysis further confirms positive spillovers (direct effects = 0.282–0.320; indirect effects = 0.260–1.317; p < 0.05). These findings enrich endogenous growth theory by integrating digital and green development into emerging economies and underscore DNQPF’s role in advancing SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production). Coordinated digital–green strategies, institutional reforms, and inclusive infrastructure are therefore critical for achieving sustainable industrial transformation in China and beyond. Full article

As China advances its rural revitalization and agricultural modernization, agricultural new-quality productivity (ANQP)—driven by technological innovation and efficient factor allocation—has become essential for achieving sustainable agricultural growth. This study examines how the rural demographic structure influences ANQP, focusing on four key dimensions: age, gender, household, and consumption. Using balanced panel data from 30 Chinese provinces spanning 2013–2022, a comprehensive ANQP index is constructed through the entropy-weight method, and a two-way fixed-effects model is employed, supplemented by robustness and heterogeneity tests. The results show that ANQP has steadily increased nationwide but remains significantly shaped by demographic characteristics. Specifically, population aging exerts a strong inhibitory effect by crowding out productive investment and slowing technology adoption, while gender imbalance weakens labor division efficiency and distorts resource allocation. In contrast, consumption upgrading acts as a positive driver by stimulating demand for high-quality agricultural products, whereas household size has no statistically significant effect. Regional heterogeneity further reveals diverse patterns—such as stronger aging constraints in central regions and pronounced positive effects of consumption upgrading in southern coastal areas. Overall, the findings underscore the critical role of demographic dynamics in driving agricultural transformation and provide evidence-based policy implications for promoting sustainable and innovation-led agricultural development. Full article

This paper examines how marketization influences the spatial effects of household consumption upgrading in China, by analyzing provincial panel data from China between 2010 and 2022. The study employs a two-way fixed-effects Spatial Durbin Model to capture both the direct effects of marketization within a region and the spillover effects transmitted to neighboring regions. This model incorporates spatial dependence in both dependent and independent variables, providing a comprehensive assessment of spatial interactions. The results reveal that marketization and consumption upgrading both have the spatial pattern characteristics of significant spatial difference and agglomeration features. Marketization considerably encourages the upgrading of local people’s consumption and has positive spillover effects on the consumption upgrading levels of nearby regions. Mechanism analysis shows that market competition and enterprise innovation play key roles in this process. Heterogeneity analysis shows in eastern regions, areas with high industrial upgrading levels, high financial agglomeration levels, and high house prices, and the promotion effect of marketization on household consumption upgrading is more pronounced. These findings suggest that promoting differentiated regional marketization reforms, amplifying the spillover effects of marketization, reinforcing the dual engine of competition and innovation, and strengthening industrial upgrading and financial agglomeration are key to promote Chinese household consumption upgrading. Full article

The equitable allocation of clean energy access across towns–rural divides is a critical benchmark of modernization in developing economies. This is because it is intricately linked to the realization of strategic goals such as shared prosperity, ecological civilization advancement, and national energy security reinforcement. This research examines the impact of China’s digital village (DV) construction in reducing the urban–rural disparity in household clean energy access, evaluates the effect on towns–rural clean energy consumption inequality (CEI), explores the mediating mechanisms, and considers regional heterogeneity. It is an innovative approach to test the influence of digital village construction on clean energy consumption inequality between urban and rural areas, beyond which conventional research is limited to infrastructure investment and policy considerations. We can reach the following three results: (1) With the continuous improvement of digital village construction, CEI between towns and rural areas shows an “inverted U-shaped” change. (2) From the perspective of the intermediary mechanism, agricultural technological progress (ATP) and industrial structure upgrading (IND) can facilitate digital village construction and reduce the disparity in clean energy consumption between towns and rural regions. (3) From the perspective of heterogeneity analysis, digital village construction in areas with low urbanization levels, high terrain undulation, and non-clean energy demonstration provinces can significantly alleviate CEI. It is on this basis that the present paper proposes a policy recommendation for the Chinese government to effectively reduce the gap between towns and rural clean energy consumption in the process of digital village construction. Full article

Promoting clean energy transition in rural areas is a key path to achieving global sustainable development, protecting public health, and promoting ecological livability. Based on data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this paper employs a multi-dimensional fixed effects model to evaluate the impact of income inequality on rural households’ clean energy transition (CET) and examines its underlying mechanisms. Research findings indicate that income inequality significantly suppresses rural households’ CET, primarily by reducing basic energy consumption and hindering the upgrading of basic energy consumption structures. Government governance quality exerts a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between income inequality and rural households’ CET. Further analysis shows that the inhibitory effect of income inequality on CET is more significant in the regions with a low economic development level and low coal resource endowment, and in the western and northeastern regions of China. Therefore, while continuously promoting rural income growth, the government should prioritize equitable distribution, strengthen institutional capacity-building, improve the social service and security system, and facilitate rural households’ CET. Full article