When Do Robots Go Green? Unveiling Mechanisms, Thresholds, and Spillovers of Industrial Robotics on Global Ecological Capacity
利用50个国家2000-2024年的面板数据，研究了工业机器人采用对生态能力（以生物承载力衡量）的影响，发现机器人通过降低交易成本和加速绿色技术进步提升生态能力，但效果取决于产业升级阶段、地理邻近性和贸易整合程度。
ABSTRACT This paper examines the relationship between industrial robotics adoption and ecological capacity, measured by biocapacity, using panel data from 50 countries over the period 2000–2024. We investigate the transmission mechanisms, non‐linearities, spatial spillovers, and heterogeneity characterizing this relationship. Our empirical analysis yields five principal findings. First , industrial robotics demonstrates a positive effect on biocapacity. Second , mechanism analysis reveals that robotics strengthens ecological capacity through two primary transmission channels: institutional flexibility via reduced transaction costs and accelerated green‐biased technological progress, with the latter representing the dominant pathway. Third , threshold regression models identify a three‐regime non‐linear relationship: Robotics exhibits modest positive effects at low levels of industrial upgrading, counterintuitively adverse effects during the intermediate transition phase, and substantially amplified positive effects at advanced stages of industrial upgrading. Fourth , spillover analysis shows that ecological gains from robotics are significantly larger in countries with geographic proximity to Japan, the global robotics innovation hub, while trade‐based heterogeneity reveals substantially amplified effects in high‐trade economies and significant effects exclusively in countries with deep global value chain integration. Fifth , heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that robotics' environmental benefits are greater in high‐income countries, those with advanced digital infrastructure, and high‐population‐density economies, while effects are attenuated or negative in low‐income and digitally‐limited contexts. The results imply that policy sequencing—combining robotics deployment with structural upgrading, institutional strengthening, skills and infrastructure investments, and strategic trade integration—is essential to secure sustained improvements in ecological capacity.