Does digital government transformation drive regional green innovation? Evidence from cities in China

With the escalating environmental challenges, regional green innovation, as the key to achieving the goal of environmental sustainability, has evolved into a focal point of societal apprehension. The external environment of regional green innovation has changed amid the digital government transformation (DGT). However, there hasn't been much discussion of how DGT affects regional green innovation. Therefore, to explore the impact of DGT on regional green innovation and its specific mechanism, we use the China Mobile Online Service Platform (MOSP) adoption as a quasi -natural experiment, based on panel data on 288 cities in China from 2006 to 2020, and apply a time -varying difference -in -differences model. Our study finds that DGT affects regional green innovation in a positive way. Green financial development and green -talent gathering mediate the DGT's influence on regional green innovation. The government's policy attention to green development and technology research plays a positive moderating role between DGT and regional green innovation. Our study advances the research on DGT's contribution to environmental sustainability by confirming the positive effects of DGT on regional green innovation.