Does Digital Trade Inhibit or Exacerbate Carbon Emissions?

--Evidence from China

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-774-3_18How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Energy; Carbon Emission; Digital Trade; Cross-border Ecommerce; GMM

Abstract

The reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is receiving increasingly more attention from the international community. Nevertheless, what are the primary factors that impact carbon dioxide emissions? How to curb carbon dioxide emissions without blocking economic development? Based on a panel data of China from 2000 to 2022, this article studies the relationships between Internet Penetration, Import and Export Trade and Carbon Dioxide emissions by using correlation analysis, unit root test, and least square regression via EViews. Results show significant same-direction Co-relation between Internet Penetration Rate, Import Trade value, Export Trade value and Carbon Emissions. The findings are as follows: Increase in both import and export trade volume are correlated with an increase in carbon emissions. In the global industrial division of labour, both consumers and producers of goods should be equally responsible for their carbon emissions. Although Internet development can suppress carbon emissions by optimizing the international supply chain to some extent, Internet Penetration development will mainly increase carbon emissions through promoting Cross-border E-commerce. Policies and measures are put forward accordingly, such as new energy substitution, carbon consumption tax, green certificate, electronic data transmission, and the use of low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle for delivery to reduce manpower and save energy.

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.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Li Zhang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/11
TI  - Does Digital Trade Inhibit or Exacerbate Carbon Emissions?
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Mathematical Statistics and Economic Analysis (MSEA 2026
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 202
EP  - 215
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-774-3_18
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-774-3_18
ID  - Zhang2026
ER  -