The Impact of Digital Technology Application on Industrial Carbon Emission Intensity: Empirical Evidence from Industry Panel Data

Under the constraints of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, identifying the carbon-reduction effect of digital technology application in industry and its cross-industry variation is essential for designing differentiated low-carbon policies. This paper matches the World Input-Output Database (WIOD, 2013 release) with the OECD Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO)-based Greenhouse Gas Footprints database (2025 edition) at the industry-year level, constructing a balanced panel of 15 Chinese industrial sectors over 1995-2011 (255 observations). Carbon emission intensity is measured as the ratio of Scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions to value added, and digital technology application is measured as the share of intermediate inputs purchased from information and communication technology (ICT) sectors in total intermediate inputs. A two-way fixed effects model is employed for estimation. The results show that digital technology application is significantly and negatively associated with industrial carbon emission intensity, with a baseline coefficient of -3.16 (p = 0.0015): a one-standard-deviation increase in the digitalization share is associated with approximately 30% lower carbon intensity. The finding survives robustness checks including lagged regressors, alternative digitalization measures, winsorization, and an alternative intensity denominator. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the effect is concentrated in high-technology manufacturing. Policy makers are therefore advised to target technology-intensive manufacturing when deploying digitalization-based decarbonization instruments.