Does improved digital governance in government promote natural resource management? Quasi-natural experiments based on smart city pilots

Abstract

Based on panel data for 281 cities in China from 2007 to 2021, this paper uses the global Malmquist‒Luenberger index to measure natural resource management. Using the smart city pilot as a quasi-natural experiment in government digital governance, the progressive difference-in-differences method was used to investigate whether the government's digital governance capacity promotes green and sustainable development. The main findings are as follows: the improvement of the government's digital governance capacity significantly contributes to green and sustainable development. After a series of placebo tests and robustness tests, the results of this paper still hold. Government digital governance promotes natural resource management mainly through two mechanisms: green technology innovation and intellectual property protection, and the quality of green technology innovation plays a more critical role than quantity. The impact of improved government digital governance on natural resource management varies significantly across different types of cities, cities with different political levels, and cities with different urban locations and human capital levels.