National Big Data Pilots and urban green technological diversification: digital catalyst or digital divide?

The transition towards green development requires cities to not only increase green innovation outputs but also develop diversified green technological portfolios. However, the effects of digitally oriented policies on structural changes in green innovation remain underexplored. The National Big Data Pilots (NBDP) integrate data resources and develop data platforms to promote adjacent and distant green knowledge recombination. This study employs a staggered difference-in-differences estimator to examine the effect of NBDP on urban green technological diversification (UGTD) using data from 291 Chinese cities from 2010 to 2023. The results suggest that NBDP acts as a digital catalyst for UGTD, with the positive effect on related diversification remaining significant after controlling for green patent count. The effects are heterogeneous across digital endowment dimensions, with larger effects observed in cities with a stronger digital workforce and digital industry and smaller incremental gains associated with better digital infrastructure. Further analysis suggests that NBDP’s effects extend beyond treated cities by generating positive spillover effects on spatially proximate cities.