The Impact of Digital Economy on Industrial Structure Upgrading in Hubei Province

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-672-2_10How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Hubei Province; digital economy; industrial structure upgrading; fixed effects model

Abstract

As a core province in Central China and a key node of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Hubei Province faces structural challenges such as lagging transformation of traditional industries and insufficient cultivation of emerging industries. The digital economy has become a core pillar for its industrial structure upgrading. Based on panel data of Hubei Province from 2011 to 2023, this study measures the level of digital economy using the entropy weight method, and explores the impact mechanism between digital economy and industrial structure upgrading through the two-way fixed effects model, multiple mediation effect model, and robustness tests. The results show that: Hubei’s digital economy presents a trend of steady cultivation—accelerated leapfrog growth, while industrial structure upgrading shows characteristics of fluctuating adjustment—sustained rise, with a significant positive correlation between the two; mediation effect analysis indicates that the digital economy can indirectly promote industrial upgrading through three paths: market demand expansion, urbanization agglomeration, and technological innovation improvement; among control variables, government intervention, degree of opening-up, and high-end technical talents all have significant positive effects, while population density has no significant impact. This study clarifies the internal mechanism of the digital economy driving industrial structure upgrading in Hubei, providing a scientific basis for Hubei Province to formulate differentiated policies and strengthen its function as a regional strategic pivot.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Shuying Huang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/12
TI  - The Impact of Digital Economy on Industrial Structure Upgrading in Hubei Province
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 3rd International Conference on Applied Economics, Management Science and Social Development (AEMSS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 93
EP  - 104
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-672-2_10
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-672-2_10
ID  - Huang2026
ER  -