Does internet infrastructure improve or reduce carbon emission performance? --A dual perspective based on local government intervention and market segmentation

The Internet itself contains the characteristics of technological progress, as a green technological means to promote the green development of the economy. The study focuses on the practical issue of how Internet infrastructure affects the efficiency of carbon emissions. It uses panel data of prefecture-level cities from 2004 to 2017, based on the carbon emission efficiency measured using the slacks-based measure-global Malmquist–Luenberger index model, employing the static panel and panel quantile regression models. The different degrees of the impact of internet infrastructure on carbon emission efficiency were quantified from the perspectives of the local government intervention status and market segmentation, and the following results were obtained: First, Internet infrastructure improves total factor carbon emission performance significantly, with significant inhibitory effects on carbon emission intensity under the conditions of market segmentation and government intervention. Second, the interactions of internet infrastructure with local government intervention and market segmentation improved the carbon emission performance. Third, internet infrastructure enhanced carbon emission performance significantly (by 25%) under the local government intervention and market segmentation conditions, and the degrees of carbon emission efficiency varied with both contributions. Thus, this study revealed how local government intervention and market fragmentation can break the bottleneck of the effect of internet infrastructure on carbon emissions and how the government can optimize the external environment continuously to ensure the positive role of internet infrastructure in carbon emission performance.