Digital transformation and economic growth Efficiency improvement in the Digital media era: Digitalization of industry or Digital industrialization?

With the arrival of the era of digital media, the digital economy has burst forth with unprecedented vigor and become an important force in promoting the high-quality development of China's economy. This study focuses on the impact of urban digital transformation on economic growth efficiency in the context of the digital media era. Employing Chinese city-level data from 2011 to 2019, we use double fixed-effects and spatial Durbin models to empirically analyze how digital industrialization and industrial digitization affect urban economic growth efficiency. Our results show that digital industrialization and industrial digitization significantly enhance the efficiency of economic growth of Chinese cities in a digital media environment, and this positive correlation is especially significant in cities with higher levels of digitization. For less digitized cities, digital industrialization contributes more significantly to economic growth efficiency. In addition, we find that digital industrialization and industrial digitization positively affect the economic growth efficiency of neighboring regions through spatial spillover effects. These findings are a valuable reference in this digital era for the formulation of development strategies adapted to cities with different levels of digitization, and these emphasize the key role of regional collaboration and integrated strategies in promoting digital transformation.