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How to deeply embed the digital economy into the product quality upgrade? The moderating effect of resource allocation

Chenghui Dong (School of Economics, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China)
Dexue Liu (School of Economics, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China)

Kybernetes

ISSN: 0368-492X

Article publication date: 15 June 2023

Issue publication date: 30 October 2024

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper evaluates the level of the digital economy in Chinese cities based on digital industrialization and industrial digitalization. The research focuses on the effects of spatial mechanism of the urban digital economy on the quality of firms’ exported products.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors use the principal component analysis method to evaluate the level of China’s urban digital economy, and spatial metrology to measure the spatial effects of the digital economy on product quality.

Findings

The findings suggest that the urban digital economy can expand the quality of firms’ exports. The digital economy has spatial dependence, spatial spillover and spatial heterogeneity on product quality. At the same time, the spatial effect has a significant nonlinear effect and threshold effect. Further decomposition shows that industrial digitalization is the core factor of enterprises’ export products quality, and the micro-mechanism of this impact is mainly manifested in optimization of resource allocation.

Originality/value

The innovation of this paper is reflected explicitly in exploring the quality upgrading of export products from the background of the digital economy, providing a reference for the improvement of China’s export trade competitiveness and the cultivation of a trade power. The authors studied two different mechanisms (specialization division of labor and optimization of resource allocation) to explain the spatial imbalance of export product quality to provide empirical support for enterprises and government departments to formulate quality upgrading policies accurately.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Funding: This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation under Grant number 17ZDA047.

Citation

Dong, C. and Liu, D. (2024), "How to deeply embed the digital economy into the product quality upgrade? The moderating effect of resource allocation", Kybernetes, Vol. 53 No. 10, pp. 3875-3895. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-11-2022-1619

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited

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