Does new digital infrastructure promote the low-carbon transformation of fisheries: evidence from carbon emissions across Chinese provinces

New digital infrastructure (NDI) provides the technological foundation for integrating data as a factor of production into all stages of fishery production and operations, thereby facilitating the green and low-carbon transformation of fisheries under China’s “dual carbon” goals. Using panel data from 30 provincial-level regions in mainland China over the period 2004–2024, excluding Tibet, this study measures the development level of new digital infrastructure through textual analysis and employs double machine learning to evaluate its effect on fishery carbon emissions. Extended analyses are further conducted from the perspectives of potential transmission pathways, regional and temporal heterogeneity, endogeneity, and spatial spillover effects. The results show that NDI significantly reduces FCE, and this finding remains robust across a range of robustness checks. The potential-pathway analysis shows that NDI is positively associated with technological progress, industrial structure upgrading, and a cleaner energy structure. The spatial spillover analysis shows that NDI not only reduces FCE in the local region but also generates significant emission-reduction effects in spatially connected regions, with the indirect effect exceeding the direct effect. These findings provide empirical evidence for understanding the carbon-reduction effect of NDI in the fishery sector and its potential transmission pathways. They also offer policy implications for optimizing the regional deployment of digital infrastructure and advancing the green and low-carbon transformation of fisheries.