The emerging driving force of inclusive green growth: Does digital economy agglomeration work?

Inclusive green growth, which considers green growth, inclusive growth and growth, is a sustainable development model that aims to pursue the comprehensive and harmonious growth of humans, the economy, society, and the environment. Against the backdrop of the pandemic as well as sluggish economic development, the global economy is endowed with a driving mission that may affect inclusive green growth. This research primarily discusses the influence of digital economy agglomeration on inclusive green growth and its transmission mechanism in China. Specifically, the slacks-based measure of directional distance functions (SBM-DDF) model was integrated with the global Malmquist–Luenberger index (GML) to calculate inclusive green growth at the city level for 282 cities in China during 2004–2019. A measurement system for the digital economy level was constructed, and the degree of digital economy agglomeration in each region was further measured through geographic concentration. Based on these analyses, this research points out that digital economy agglomeration exerts a positive influence on inclusive green growth. The transmission mechanism analysis indicates that inclusive green growth is influenced by digital economy agglomeration through energy consumption, environmental pollution, economic growth, human capital, industrial structure, and technological progress. Moreover, taking the “Broadband China” pilot policy as the starting point, a spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) model was used to analyze the policy effect. The results suggest that the “Broadband China” policy is conducive to enhancing local inclusive green growth, while it inhibits inclusive green growth in neighboring cities.