In the context of promoting high-quality economic development, using digital technology to empower industrial transformation and upgrading, thus driving consumption growth has become a key problem that needs to be solved urgently. By using data at the prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2020, the paper has discussed the influence of the digital economy on residents' consumption and its internal mechanism. Theoretical analysis and empirical test results have shown that first of all, the digital economy has significantly improved residents' consumption, and this conclusion is still valid after the endogenous test and robustness test. Secondly, mechanism analysis has shown that the digital economy can increase residents' consumption by promoting the upgrading of the industrial structure. Thirdly, the promotion effect of the digital economy on residents' consumption is heterogeneous between urban and rural areas and between different regions. Compared with urban, and eastern and central regions, the digital economy has a more significant incentive for residents' consumption in rural areas and western regions, indicating that its development is beneficial to narrowing the gap of consumption between urban and rural areas and between regions. Finally, the improvement effect of the digital economy on residents' consumption has marginal increment nonlinear characteristics, which is continuously strengthened with the upgrading of industrial structure. The above research conclusions can provide a theoretical basis for further improving the infrastructure of the digital economy, accelerating the integration of the digital economy with traditional industries, and building a consumer Internet.

In this study, we empirically analyze the impact of the effects of digital inclusive finance (DIF) on high-quality economic development in Chinese prefecture-level cities. We find the following conclusions: first, the total index and sub-index of DIF can promote high-quality economic development. Second, DIF significantly promotes high-quality economic development by narrowing the urban-rural income gap and alleviating financing constraints. Third, DIF is conducive to the improvement of economic quality in neighboring regions.

The growth of digital economy and sustainable development of environment are important issues related to high-quality economic development in the new era. This paper selects the yearly data of China from 2007 to 2021, constructs the China’s Environmental Performance Index, and establishes the TVP-VAR model to investigate the dynamic time-varying relationship between digital economy growth, CO2 emissions, and sustainable development of environment in short, medium and long-term. The results show that the relationships among them are time-varying at all terms. Specifically, in first, the growth of the digital economy exerts a negative impulse on CO2 emissions, and the short-term effect is greater than the long-term effect. Secondly, there exist positive impulses between the growth of the digital economy and sustainable development of environment. And CO2 emissions has a negative impact on sustainable development of environment. Thirdly, they have same influencing tendencies at certain time points, but different impact degrees. The impact of the digital economy development on environmental sustainable development has significantly increased since the COVID-19 outbreak. Therefore, the development of digital economy can effectively reduce CO2 emissions and promote the sustainable development of the environment.