Spatial Interaction Spillover Effects between Digital Financial Technology and Urban Ecological Efficiency in China: An Empirical Study Based on Spatial Simultaneous Equations

As a core component of the digital economy, digital financial technology has a complex interactive and interdependent relationship with ecological efficiency. From the holistic spatial interaction perspective, this paper uses spatial simultaneous equations and generalized spatial three-stage least squares (GS3SLS) to analyze the spatial interaction spillovers between digital financial technology and urban ecological efficiency based on data from 284 Cities in China from 2008 to 2018. The results show that: (1) Digital financial technology and urban ecological efficiency promote each other, and the latter is relatively dominant. (2) Both digital financial technology and urban ecological efficiency have significant spatial spillover effects. (3) Digital financial technology in surrounding cities has a restraining effect on local ecological efficiency, and the improvement of ecological efficiency in surrounding cities has a siphon effect on local digital financial technology. (4) There is spatial and period heterogeneity in the intensity of the spatial interaction spillover effect between the two. With resources and environment increasingly becoming rigid constraints on economic growth, these findings help identify new drivers of regional ecological efficiency and promote the coordinated development of digital finance and green ecology.