The impact of digital industrialization and industrial digitalization on regional green innovation efficiency in China -From the perspective of the innovation value chain

To systematically detect the influence of digital economy on regional green innovation, this study regards regional green innovation as a two-stage sequential process, and constructs a network SBM model to evaluate the overall and stage green innovation efficiency of 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2020. Digital economy development is decomposed into digital industrialization and industrial digitalization, and an empirical study based on fixed effects regression model of panel data is conducted to determine their influence on the overall and stage green innovation efficiency. The results suggest the following: (1) The overall efficiency in China remained at a low level, with the efficiency of research and development being slightly higher than that of achievement transformation. (2) From the national perspective, there is no discernible effect of digital industrialization on overall efficiency, but there is a negative impact on research and development and a significant positive impact on achievement transformation. Industrial digitalization significantly improves achievement transformation and overall efficiency but has no discernible effect on the research and development stage. (3) In the eastern region, industrial digitalization promotes the improvement of both stages and overall efficiency, while digital industrialization does not have a significant impact. In the central region, digital industrialization and industrial digitalization have significant positive impacts on both overall efficiency and the efficiency of achievement transformation but have no impact on research and development. In the western region, digital industrialization inhibits the overall and achievement transformation efficiency, and industrial digitalization does not have significant impact on the overall efficiency or the efficiency of each stage. Finally, some relevant policy recommendations are proposed.