I would like to raise a critical concern regarding the interpretation of one of the core results in the mechanism analysis, specifically related to labor productivity. In Table 7 (Column 1), the interaction term between the digital economy and government governance is negative and statistically significant. This result contradicts Hypothesis 4, which explicitly anticipates that government governance enhances the digital economy’s positive impact on labor productivity. The implication here is that stronger governance appears to diminish, rather than reinforce, the productivity effects of digitalization, raising questions about the robustness of labor productivity as a mediating pathway.
Despite this contradiction, the discussion treats labor productivity as a valid transmission mechanism in the digital–governance synergy narrative. The paper does not provide an explanation for the sign reversal in the interaction term, nor does it address the implications of this finding for the validity of the proposed mechanism.
Given that the same fixed effects specification supports the other two mechanisms (green technology innovation and industrial upgrading), the inconsistency in labor productivity should not be selectively overlooked. Could the authors clarify how they reconcile this result with their overall conclusion? If labor productivity does not function as a reinforcing mechanism under stronger governance, it would significantly affect the interpretation of the model and the derived policy recommendations.
Since digital infrastructure in China is usually driven by government policy, and governance indicators often overlap with those efforts, I’m wondering how the authors handled potential simultaneity or overlap in their model. Was there any check for multicollinearity or endogeneity, like using VIF diagnostics or an instrumental variable approach? It’d be good to know whether the reported synergy is robust, or if it might be influenced by how closely these variables are tied together structurally.