The Impact of Digital Economy on Enterprises’ Green Technological Innovation

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the coordinated advancement of Digital China construction and the dual carbon goals, exploring the enabling effect of the digital economy on the green transformation of micro-enterprises is of great theoretical and practical significance. Based on the resource-based view and information asymmetry theory, this paper takes China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2013 to 2023 as research samples and constructs an enterprise digital economy development index. Adopting a two-way fixed effect model, this paper empirically examines the impact of the digital economy on corporate green technological innovation. The research results show that the digital economy can significantly promote enterprises’ green technological innovation, and the conclusion remains valid after a series of robustness tests including substituting explained variables, lagging core explanatory variables, and Tobit model regression. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the driving effect of the digital economy is more prominent in non-state-owned enterprises and heavily polluting industries. Mechanistically, the digital economy alleviates information asymmetry and financing constraints, thereby stimulating green R&D investment and innovation output. This paper finally puts forward targeted policy suggestions on improving digital infrastructure, implementing differentiated incentive policies, and promoting the integration of digital and real economies, which provides empirical evidence for the coordinated realization of high-quality economic development and ecological environmental improvement.