Big Data Policy and Smart City Policy Synergistic Empowerment of Green Technology Innovation: Evidence from Panel Data of Chinese Prefecture-level Cities

Promoting comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development is a key link in achieving high-quality economic development. Green technology innovation is the core content and important guarantee for comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development. This paper constructs a quasi-natural experiment of synergistic empowerment of digital intelligence policies using national big data pilot zone policies and smart city policies. Based on panel data from 265 prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2021, this study examines the mechanism and heterogeneous effects of digital intelligence policy synergistic empowerment on green technology innovation. The results show that digital intelligence policies have a significant synergistic empowerment effect on green technology innovation through human capital agglomeration, environmental regulation, and intellectual property protection mechanisms. The empowerment effects exhibit significant heterogeneity across different regions and city characteristics.