Natural resource consumption and industrial green transformation: Does the digital economy matter?

Natural resource consumption and the digital economy are increasingly critical in empowering industrial green transformation, which is also an ongoing and valuable topic worth exploring. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of natural resource use and the digital economy on industrial green transformation in 30 Chinese provincial-level administrative data from 2006 to 2020. The outcomes reveal that digital economy can significantly drive industrial green transformation by elevating natural resource consumption. Significant heterogeneity is observed in the effects of natural resource use and digital economy on industrial green transformation. Manifestly, the digital economy stimulates industrial green transformation by promoting natural resource use in the east-central regions of China, while the mechanism is insignificant in the western region of China. Finally, the positive impact of natural resource use on industrial green transformation is gradually strengthening with the continuous increase in the digital economy level. Our findings imply that policymakers should differentiate the execution of digital economy policies and build an empowered natural resource usage system led by the digital economy to accelerate industrial green transformation.