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Data infrastructures, economic processes, and governance models of digital platforms are increasingly pervading urban sectors and spheres of urban life. This phenomenon is known as platformization, which has in turn given rise to the phenomena of platform society, where platforms have permeated the core of urban societies. A recent manifestation of platformization is the Metaverse, a global platform project launched by Meta (formerly Facebook) as a globally operating platform company. The Metaverse represents an idea of a hypothetical “parallel virtual world” that incarnate ways of living and working in virtual cities as an alternative to smart cities of the future. Indeed, with emerging innovative technologies—such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, the IoT, and Digital Twins—providing rich datasets and advanced computational understandings of human behavior, the Metaverse has the potential to redefine city designing activities and service provisioning towards increasing urban efficiencies, accountabilities, and quality performance. However, there still remain ethical, human, social, and cultural concerns as to the Metaverse’s influence upon the quality of human social interactions and its prospective scope in reconstructing the quality of urban life. This paper undertakes an upper-level literature review of the area of the Metaverse from a broader perspective. Further, it maps the emerging products and services of the Metaverse, and explores their potential contributions to smart cities with respect to their virtual incarnation, with a particular focus on the environmental, economic, and social goals of sustainability. This study may help urban policy makers to better understand the opportunities and implications of the Metaverse upon tech-mediated practices and applied urban agendas, as well as assess the positives and negatives of this techno-urban vision. This paper also offers thoughts regarding the argument that the Metaverse has disruptive and substantive effects on forms of reconstructing reality in an increasingly platformized urban society. This will hopefully stimulate prospective research and further critical perspectives on the topic.

Purpose: The new competitive environment characterized by innovation and constant change is forcing a new organizational behavior. This requires a digital transformation of SMEs based on collective performance determinants. SMEs have particular characteristics that differentiate them from large companies and a model that allows them to identify, leverage and develop their digital capabilities can help them to advance in digital maturity. Design/methodology/approach: An in-depth review of the existing literature on digital transformation and organizational competence was carried out on Scopus and Web of Science to identify the digital challenges faced by SMEs, and what digital capabilities they have to develop to face these challenges. In order to obtain the necessary information for the refinement of organizational competence for digital transformation model, six experts were interviewed; three of them are academics and the other three are professionals with management responsibilities in SMEs. We used semi-structured interviews, to keep the interviews focused and facilitate cross-data analysis between experts. In addition, it allowed us the possibility of analyzing new relevant aspects that could arise during the interview. Findings: As a result of this study we have developed a refined model of organizational competence for digital transformation that allows SMEs to identify and develop the digital capabilities necessary to advance in the digital transformation, refined with the opinions of six experts consulted. We were able to observe the importance of organizational learning and organizational knowledge to advance the digital transformation of SMEs. Originality/value: The developed model is useful for SME managers to know what the initial starting situation is, what the digital gaps are and to be able to plan the actions to develop the necessary digital capabilities to advance towards digital maturity.

At present, there is a consensus that the digital economy provides a new impetus for sustainable economic development. Based on domestic and foreign literature reviews, this paper focuses on representative industry sectors; we present China’s 2011–2018 digital economy development index, for 173 cities, from a three-level perspective—internet development, digital literacy, and industrial efficiency improvement. Various models, such as the instrumental variable method, the double difference method, the intermediary effect model, and the spatial econometric model were used to quantitatively analyze the impact of digital economic development on urban economic growth in China. The study finds that: (1) digital economic development in China has a positive effect on urban economic growth, and a heterogeneity of effects exists between different cities. (2) Urban employment is the “effect mechanism” of digital economic growth on urban economic growth. (3) The direct effect of digital economic development on urban economic growth in China is positive, the spillover effect is positive, the direct effect is greater than the spillover effect, and the total effect is positive. The research results enrich the measurement methods used in urban digital economic development in China, providing new perspectives for studying the influence mechanisms of digital economic development on urban economic growth.

Although the digital economy has become a new driving force for development worldwide, it is still unclear how digital economy development affects green total factor energy efficiency (GTFEE). Using panel data from 281 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2018, this study empirically analyzes the effect of digital economy development on GTFEE by adopting a dynamic panel model, a mediation effect model, a dynamic threshold panel model, and a spatial Durbin model. The empirical results show that digital economy development has a significantly negative direct effect on GTFEE. The digital economy can impact GTFEE by the mechanisms of electrification, hollowing out of industrial scale, and hollowing out of industrial efficiency. Neither innovation nor environmental regulations significantly change this negative impact. The dynamic threshold panel model shows a nonlinear relationship between digital economy development and GTFEE, which indicates that the effect of digital economy development on GTFEE significantly inverts from negative to positive as the digital economy develops. In addition, GTFEE has a significantly positive spatial correlation, and the digital economy has a positive spatial spillover effect on GTFEE.

As the driving force for the upgrading of the global industrial structure, digital technology has been at the helm of transforming the current economic and technological paradigm. This study empirically analyzes the role of the digital economy in the upgrading industrial structure using panel data from 237 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011–2019. Empirical results show that the development of the digital economy has a significant positive and direct effect on the upgrading of industrial structure, as measured by the two indicators of advancement and servitization. In addition, the digital economy significantly promotes upgrading of the technological progress and human capital of Chinese cities, thus promoting upgrading of the industrial structure. Moreover, the spatial autoregressive model (SAR) and the Spatial Durbin model (SDM) both show that the digital economy has a positive spatial spillover effect on upgrading of the industrial structure.

Circular economy (CE) is a concept actively advocated by the European Union (EU), China, Japan, and the United Kingdom. At present, CE is considered to grant the most traction for companies to achieve sustainable development. However, CE is still rarely adopted by enterprises. As the backbone of the fourth industrial revolution, the digital economy (DE) is considered to have a disruptive effect. Studies have shown that digital technology has great potential in promoting the development of CE. Especially during the COVID-19 epidemic that has severely negatively affected the global economy, environment, and society, CE and DE are receiving high attention from policy makers, practitioners, and scholars around the world. However, the integration of CE and digital technology is a small and rapidly developing research field that is still in its infancy. Although there is a large amount of research in the fields of CE and DE, respectively, there are few studies that look into integrating these two fields. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the research progress and trends of the integration of CE and DE, and provide an overview for future research. This paper adopts a bibliometric research method, employs the Web of Science database as its literature source, and uses VOSviewer visual software to carry out keyword co-occurrence analysis, which focuses on publication trends, journal sources, keyword visualization, multidisciplinary areas, life cycle stages, and application fields.

Digital products and services form a digital value chain in the process of value chain circulation and value added. The peer effects arising from mutual learning between regions can also influence the digital value chain. Using multi-regional input–output table data from China for the years 2012, 2015, and 2017, this paper constructs a panel data model to explore the impact of peer effects on the digital value chain. The analysis also delves into the mechanisms and variations in the influence of peer effects across different regions. The results show that peer effects can significantly enhance digital value chain positions (DVCPs) in the region, and the results are robust. The primary pathway through which peer effects influence the DVCPs is the level of attention given to digital economy policy. Furthermore, the heterogeneity of peer effects on the DVCPs varies depending on advanced technology and the industry intensity.

This paper examines the role the digital economy plays in international trade impacts on Africa's economic growth based on 53 countries' sample from 2000-2018. We further divided the sample into five sub-regions, and the results are estimated by POLS, random and fixed effects, and the GMM models. The findings showed that (1) trade only has positive effects on economic growth when interacted with the digital economy in the POLS estimations, (2) Trade has a significantly positive impact on economic prosperity without and with the interactive term in the RE, FE, and the sys-GMM estimations, (3) the output elasticities of capital and labor have positive and negative impacts on economic growth, respectively, (4) the regressions for the sub-sample yielded statistically significant differences in the output elasticities for the indicators. The study recommends that concentrated efforts be directed towards developing the digital economy to ensure international trade's full economic effect in Africa.

This study aims to analyze the interconnection between the concepts of digital economy and sustainability. These concepts have become popular due to awareness of climate change and the increased development and adoption of technologies. Researchers, business leaders and policymakers are exploring the many ways digital technologies can be used to address sustainability issues. Using a systematic literature review with a bibliometric analysis, we examined a sample of 92 studies indexed in SCOPUS to identify research activity on this topic up until April 2023. We found that 2022 had the highest number of peer-reviewed articles, with 31 publications. During the research, we identified multiple opportunities for this interconnection, such as developing renewable energies and sustainable technological solutions, smart cities and sustainable urbanization, and sustainable consumption. These opportunities enabled by digital technologies allow companies to adopt sustainable business strategies and develop sustainable products. Despite these opportunities, the digital economy presents several challenges that can hinder efforts to achieve sustainability goals, such as increasing e-waste, high energy consumption and rising carbon emissions, the digital divide, job insecurity, growing monopolies, and data protection. These issues must be addressed to enable the optimal use of the opportunities presented in the digital economy to promote sustainability.

This study aims to reflect the grey information coverage and complex interactions effect in digital economy development. Therefore, a multi-attribute decision making method based on the grey interaction relational degree of the normal cloud matrix (GIRD-NCM) model is proposed. First, the original information coverage grey numbers are transformed into normal cloud matrixes, and then a novel Minkowski distance between normal clouds is proposed by using different information principles. Second, the GIRD-NCM model is established according to the Choquet fuzzy integral and grey relational degree. Finally, the dynamic comprehensive evaluation of digital economy development in China from 2013 to 2020 is conducted. The implementation, availability, and feasibility of the GIRD-NCM model are verified by comparative analysis with three existing evaluation models. The empirical findings reveal a stable growth trend in China’s digital economy, with an annual growth rate of 7.87%, however, there are notable regional development disparities. The change in interaction degree has no effect on the rankings of provinces that are in the lead or have a moderately high level of digital economy development, but has a positive and negative impact on the rankings of these provinces with high and low levels of digital economy development, respectively.