Exploring the Nexus Between Technological Innovation, Environmental Regulation, Human Capital, and Low-Carbon Economy

Abstract

This paper examines the panel data from 43 countries along the “Belt and Road” Initiative from 2000 to 2022 against the backdrop of global green low-carbon economic development. First, it explores the mechanism of action between technological innovation (TN) and the low-carbon economy (LE) using a panel fixed effects model. Second, by introducing environmental regulation (ER) and human capital (EDU) as moderating variables, it constructs a panel threshold model to investigate the nonlinear moderating effects in the relationship between TN and low-carbon economic development. Finally, the paper further categorizes these countries into samples to analyze the potential heterogeneity of the aforementioned effects. The empirical results indicate that: (1) TN has a negative effect on the LE of countries along the “Belt and Road”; (2) ER plays a positive moderating role in the influence of TN on the LE of these countries, while EDU exhibits a negative moderating role. Further research reveals a significant double-threshold effect of EDU in the relationship between TN and the LE, indicating that the negative effects of TN on the LE diminish as EDU increases. (3) This threshold effect displays significant heterogeneity at different levels of economic development and EDU.

Received: 9 November 2024 | Revised: 20 December 2024 | Accepted: 23 January 2025

Conflicts of Interest 

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support this work are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.

Author Contribution Statement

Jianquan Guo: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration. Xuning Zhao: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization.