Research on the impact of government attention on the digital economy of Chinese provinces

This study employs text data analysis of annual government work reports from various provinces in China for the years 2015–2020. It constructs an index measuring the extent of government attention allocated to digital economic development (DED) at the government level. Simultaneously, it establishes a DED index system to measure the level of DED. The aim is to examine the impact of government attention on the level of DED. The research findings demonstrate that government attention significantly promotes the development of the DED. For every one-unit increase in government attention to the DED, the level of DED increases by 0.043 points. This result remains robust even after conducting sensitivity tests using instrumental variable methods and variable substitution methods. In further investigation, a threshold effect model is applied, revealing a marginal increasing effect of government attention on the level of DED. As the level of DED rises, the marginal contribution of government attention increases from 0.048 to 0.112. Using a spatial durbin model, it is found that government attention exhibits a positive spatial spillover effect on the level of DED.