Purpose This paper aims to study the impact mechanism and internal mechanism of China's digital economy on the sustainable development of the logistics industry, accelerate the digitalization process of China's logistics industry, and ultimately achieve the sustainable development of the logistics industry. Design/methodology/approach Firstly, based on provincial panel data from China, using the entropy method to measure the level of sustainable development of the digital economy and the logistics industry. Secondly, controlling for the provincial fixed effect model and the time fixed effect, a two-way fixed effect model is constructed to empirically test the mechanism of the digital economy's impact on the sustainable development of the logistics industry. Findings The digital economy exerts a substantial influence on the advancement of the sustainable development of logistics industry, the unified national market exerts a positive moderating effect between the digital economy and the sustainable development of the logistics industry, the capacity of green technological innovation and the efficiency of green technological innovation provide green power for the sustainable development of the logistics industry, and the digital economy has a marginal incremental empowering effect on the sustainable development of the logistics industry, additionally, it also exhibits strong spatio-temporal heterogeneity. Research limitations/implications Currently research literature on the impact of the digital economy on the sustainable development of the logistics industry remains limited, with insufficient exploration of relevant theories and influencing mechanisms. Furthermore, certain indicators within the framework constructed in this study may not directly reflect the core environmental or social performance of the industry. Future research should focus on developing more direct and specific evaluation indicator systems to measure the direct effectiveness of sustainable development in the logistics sector, while also incorporating other variables which will enable deeper investigation into the influence of the digital economy on the sustainable development of the logistics industry. Practical implications This paper elucidates the theoretical underpinnings of the digital economy and offers empirical substantiation for the formulation of a contemporary logistics system in the context of the unified national market. The framework exhibits a level of representativeness and methodological soundness. Social implications A sustainable logistics system that is efficient, green, and accessible both internally and externally is of great significance for the logistics industry to reduce costs and increase efficiency, accelerate the construction of a unified national market in China, and promote sustainable economic development. Originality/value First, this study brings the concept of China's unified national market into the research on the sustainable development of China's logistics industry in the digital economy, providing a new research perspective on the dynamic evolution mechanism of this relationship from a quantitative angle. Second, the intermediary research mechanism expands the scope of research on the sustainable development of the logistics industry by examining two dimensions: green technological innovation capacity and green technological innovation efficiency. Finally, this paper further introduces industrial structure upgrading as a threshold variable to explore potential nonlinear mechanisms. Specifically, this paper establishes a comprehensive research framework for the sustainable development of the logistics industry.
Cao et al. (Mon,) studied this question.