Does enterprise digital transformation contribute to the carbon emission reduction? Micro-level evidence from China

Yuping Shang, Syed Raza, Zhe Huo, Umer Shahzad and Xin Zhao

International Review of Economics & Finance, 2023, vol. 86, issue C, 1-13

Abstract: Energy saving, emission reduction and low carbon development are the key contents to promote sustainable development in the world, which are also important paths to achieve China's "dual carbon" target on schedule. Especially in the wave of digital economy, the optimization of production mode brought about by the enterprise digital transformation is becoming an important driving force to reduce carbon emission intensity of enterprises. Based on the text analysis of 2012–2020 annual reports of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies, we measure the level of enterprise digital transformation, and then empirically investigate the impact of enterprise digital transformation on carbon emission intensity and the mechanisms. We find that enterprise digital transformation can significantly reduce the carbon emission intensity by improving their ability of technological innovation, internal control and environmental information disclosure. And the results are robust after a series of robustness tests such as eliminating the endogeneity bias, replacing variables and limiting samples. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis show that digital transformation has a stronger effect on the enterprises which located in the regions with strong intellectual property protection and the capital intensive enterprises, but there is no heterogeneity in the types of enterprises, in the intensity of environmental regulation of enterprises and in the information infrastructure construction of enterprises. Under the background of digitization, this paper discusses the path choices for enterprises to reduce carbon emissions, which provides references for enterprises to grasp the opportunities in the new tide of scientific and technological revolution and green economic transition.

Keywords: Enterprise digital transformation; Carbon emission reduction; A-share listed companies; Sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1059056023000576
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reveco:v:86:y:2023:i:c:p:1-13

DOI: 10.1016/j.iref.2023.02.019

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Economics & Finance is currently edited by H. Beladi and C. Chen

More articles in International Review of Economics & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().