Path to sustainable development: Does digital economy matter in manufacturing green total factor productivity?

In the context of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and China's “digital power” strategy, the realization of a green shift of manufacturing has become a necessary condition to promote the economy, and the digital factor has increasingly become a new driving force. The DEA-Malmquist index and entropy method were used to measure the manufacturing green total factor productivity (GTFP) and the level of digital economy level from 2011 to 2018, respectively. This study then explored the impact of digital economy on manufacturing GTFP based on the system generalized method of moments (GMM) model, as well as the adjustment effects of talent aggregation and financial scale according to the moderating model. This research came to four conclusions. (1) The digital economy can significantly improve the manufacturing GTFP of China, and the influence shows the characteristic of a “marginal increase”; (2) notably, the perspective of manufacturing GTFP decomposition indicates that the digital economy exerts a significant positive effect on manufacturing technical efficiency during the current period but obviously hinders technical progress; (3) interestingly, a mechanistic test showed that the two dimensions of innovation environment—talent aggregation (0.385) and financial scale (0.359)—play critical moderating roles in the influencing process; and (4) the influence has evident regional heterogeneity—it is significantly positive in the east and negative in the central region and west. Finally, corresponding policy suggestions are suggested.