2026 VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1
RESEARCH ARTICLE
The impact of digital readiness and human resource on the green development of traditional manufacturing industry
AUTHOR
Yi Liu, Lulu Miao, Ziyi Wang
ABSTRACT
Under China's Dual Carbon strategic framework, China's traditional manufacturing industry should prioritize the energy-saving, carbon-reducing, and green development in the digital age. This paper constructs a digital readiness index comprising three aspects: digital literacy, digital sense of acquisition, and digital participation, and couples it with the human resource evaluation index system. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the Yangtze River Delta's 2013–2021 panel data by the integrated regression, mediation, and threshold models in order to assess digital readiness and human resource impacts on the green development of traditional manufacturing industry. The findings of this study reveal that (1) digital readiness and human resource matching nonlinearly affect the green development of traditional manufacturing industry with an inverted "U" shape in the three stages; (2) digital readiness and human resource matching promote green development by reducing urban carbon footprints and improving energy consumption structure; (3) the impact of digital technology penetration and human resource is more pronounced for the green development of manufacturing industry in local regions with better education, which should adopt different development strategies according to local regional conditions.
KEYWORDS
Traditional manufacturing industry; Green development; Digital readiness; Human resource; Econometric model
