Abstract: With its increasingly extensive impact, digital economy has made profound changes in the efficiency, structure, regional layout and investment mode of transnational enterprises in the field of current international investment. Based on the panel data of 125 host countries (regions) around the world from 2003 to 2020, this paper explores the impact, mechanism and spatial effect of the development of digital economy on China’s outward foreign direct investment. The findings show that China is inclined to invest in the host countries (regions) with a higher level of digital economy development, and that in the host countries (regions) with higher levels of income, economic development, human capital, financial openness and economic freedom, the development of digital economy can play a greater role in promoting China’s OFDI. The results of Ward system clustering and natural breakpoint grouping show that only a high level of comprehensive development of the digital economy in the host country (region) can significantly increase the scale of China’s OFDI. The result of the function mechanism test shows that the development of the digital economy of the host country (region) will affect China’s OFDI through the two important channels: trade cost effect and investment convenience effect. The result of the spatial Durbin model shows that the digital economy of the host country (region) will have a crowding-out effect on the OFDI in the neighboring regions, and this crowding-out effect will not fall off with the increase of the distance threshold.

Key words: digital economy, outward foreign direct investment, natural breakpoint method, spatial Durbin model