The environmental spillovers of buyers' digital transformation: Evidence from China

Longda Li

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2024, vol. 209, issue C

Abstract: With respect to the carbon reduction effects of digital transformation (DT), the literature focuses mainly on individual firms' performance, ignoring the environmental spillovers arising from supplier-buyer interactions from a supply chain perspective. By examining the positive impact of buyers' DT on suppliers' carbon emission reduction (CER), we validate the existence of buyers' DT environmental spillovers. This study collects and analyzes supply chain data of Chinese A-share listed firms during 2008–2021. We construct an ordinary least squares (OLS) model and perform a cluster-robust estimation with supplier-buyer pairs as clusters. Mechanism analysis identifies two environmental spillover mechanisms—the pushback and technology spillover effects. Moreover, we find a spatial decay pattern in the buyers' DT environmental spillovers. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that such spillovers are more pronounced when suppliers are identified as polluters or when the digitization gap is narrower. This study complements the green supply chain management (GSCM) literature and provides relevant suggestions for governments and manufacturing firms in emerging economies.

Keywords: Digital transformation; Suppliers and buyers; Spillover effect; Carbon emission; Green supply chain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162524006267
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:tefoso:v:209:y:2024:i:c:s0040162524006267

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2024.123828

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().