Research on the green innovation effect of digital economy network – Empirical evidence from the manufacturing industry in the Yangtze River Delta

The digital economy is open and borderless, and the development of an urban digital economy forms an associated network. Based on the social network theory, the digital economic association network formed between cities can enable manufacturing enterprises to obtain heterogeneous resources, stabilize the network relationship between nodes, and improve innovation performance. The digital economy's spatial correlation network drives the manufacturing industry's green innovation to improve quality and efficiency. Through the integration of external relations, green innovation, proximity, regional innovation system, and other dimensions of the theory, this study takes 41 prefecture level cities in the Yangtze River Delta from 2006 to 2021 as samples to construct the digital economy correlation network of urban agglomerations and uses the social network analysis method (SNA) to reveal the evolution law of the digital economy correlation networks. We establish the panel fixed effect model to explore the green innovation effect of digital economy networks. The results show that the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration constitutes a spatial correlation network of the digital economy, promotes the sharing and exchange of manufacturing resources through factor linkage, and produces a green innovation effect. The network centrality and relationship strength have a significant inverted U-shaped relationship with the green innovation of the manufacturing industry. There is a significant U-shaped relationship between structural holes and the green innovation of the manufacturing industry. Accordingly, we should further improve the design of digital economy development and promote the development of the manufacturing industry.