Digital Green Innovation Pathway: Artificial Intelligence and Urban Green Innovation Levels - A Case Study of the Yangtze River Economic Belt in China.

Abstract With the iterative evolution of artificial intelligence technology, its characteristics such as intelligence and digitization have gradually become one of the important new engines for China's green innovation development. Based on the theory of discontinuous innovation and using panel data from 2011–2020 for 100 prefecture-level and above cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, this paper analyzes the internal mechanism of AI's effect in enhancing green innovation from the perspective of industrial agglomeration. It constructs a logical framework for AI-empowered green innovation development. The research shows that AI effectively promotes the enhancement of green innovation levels in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, a conclusion that still holds after endogeneity and robustness tests. Industrial agglomeration is an important mechanism pathway for AI to effectively enhance the green innovation level in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that, from the perspective of city size, the larger the city, the better the effect of AI in empowering green innovation development in cities along the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Regarding the heterogeneity of the three major city clusters in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, AI's green innovation effect is manifested in the Chengdu-Chongqing and Middle Yangtze city clusters, while in the Yangtze River Delta city cluster, AI does not play a green innovation effect. Further analysis finds that digital inclusive finance and the degree of informatization have significant dual threshold effects in the process of AI promoting green innovation levels. When digital inclusive finance and the degree of informatization cross the first threshold value, the marginal benefit of AI-empowered green innovation further increases. However, when digital inclusive finance crosses the second threshold value, the marginal benefit of AI-empowered green innovation weakens. Extended analysis discovers that AI has a significant spatial spillover effect in promoting green innovation development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Focusing on the dual perspectives of industrial agglomeration and green innovation, this provides theoretical support and empirical evidence for promoting China's green, low-carbon, and circular development.