“…In recent years, Chinese policymakers have increasingly recognized the significance of developing DE. However, with the rapid development of DE and the deteriorating ecological environment, academics and industry have turned their attention to the study of the relationship between DE and EQ (Wan and Shi, 2022; Ma et al 2023) [6,7]. Some of these studies have used the broadband China policy (Zou and Pan, 2023) [8], information and communication technology (ICT) devices (Huong and Thanh, 2022) [9], and digital transportation infrastructures (Zhang et al, 2023a) [10] as representatives of the development of DE, and investigated their effects on SO 2 (Wan and Shi, 2022) [6], CO 2 (Zhang et al, 2023a) [10], haze pollution (Che and Wang, 2022) [11], urban water pollution, gas pollution, powder (smoke) dust pollution (Bai et al, 2022) [12] and other specific pollutants.…”