The Spatio-Temporal Differentiation and Convergence Characteristics of the Coordinated Development of Digitalization and Greening in China

The synergistic development of digitalization and greening is an important lever for China to accelerate the formation of new quality productive forces. This study adopted the global entropy method and coupling coordination degree model to measure the level of coordinated development between digitalization and greening with the panel data of Chinese cities from 2011 to 2022. Spatio-temporal evolution characteristics were explored through kernel density estimation, the Dagum Gini coefficient, and spatial autocorrelation methods. This study further tested the convergence characteristics of coordinated development through a two-way fixed effect model and spatial econometric model. The results show the following: (1) The overall level of coordinated development of digitalization and greening in China is on the rise, with the development level in the eastern region being significantly higher than that in the central and western regions. The degree of differentiation in coordinated development shows a trend of decreasing first and then increasing, mainly due to regional differences. (2) The level of coordinated development between digitalization and greening in China shows a significant positive spatial autocorrelation feature, with a clustering pattern dominated by “low–low” clustering. (3) It is found that the coordinated development of digitalization and greening in China has significant characteristics of σ convergence, spatial β convergence and club convergence.