How digital economy and technological innovation can achieve a virtuous cycle with the ecological environment?

The quality and stability of the ecological environment are inevitable requirements of sustainable development, and previous studies have confirmed that digital economy and technological innovation have a positive enabling effect on the ecological environment. Against the background, clarify the current coordinated development relationship and level of digital economy, technological innovation, and ecological environment (DTE), and put forward policy recommendations to promote the coordinated development. This paper utilizes China's provincial panel data from 2013 to 2020 to construct a measurement index system for the levels of development in the digital economy, technological innovation, and ecological environment. The coupling coordination model is applied to evaluate the coordination relationship and level of the DTE system. Additionally, a principal component factor analysis is conducted to examine the driving factors of collaborative development level. Results show that (1) the coupling coordination relationship continues to improve, especially in cities like Guangzhou, Beijing, and Zhejiang. In 2020, most of the DTE systems' coupling coordination in China's 30 provinces were in the basic coordination stage. (2) Besides Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and other economically developed cities that lag behind in ecological environment, the rest lag in technological innovation. (3) The economic development level, technological innovation ability, and environmental forcing mechanism are the main driving forces for the development of the coupling and coordination degree of the DTE system in Chinese provinces and cities. The driving force score has shown an upward trend during the research period, and a significant upward trend after 2017.