The impact of corporate digital transformation on the export product quality: Evidence from Chinese enterprises

The digital economy has become a driving force in the rapid development of the global economy and the promotion of export trade. Pivotal in its advent, the digital transformation of enterprises utilizes cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and other digital technologies to provide an impetus for evolution and transformation in various industries and fields. in enhancing quality and efficiency. This has been critical for enhancing both quality and efficiency in enterprises based in the People’s Republic of China. Through the available data on its listed enterprises, this paper measures their digital transformation through a textual analysis and examines how this transformation influences their export product quality. We then explore the possible mechanisms at work in this influence from the perspective of enterprise heterogeneity. The results find that: (1) Digital transformation significantly enhances the export product quality in an enterprises, and the empirical findings still hold after a series of robustness tests; (2) Further mechanism analysis reveals that the digital transformation can positively affect export product quality through the two mechanisms of process productivity (φ), the ability to produce output using fewer variable inputs, and product productivity (ξ), the ability to produce quality with fewer fixed outlays; (3) In terms of enterprise heterogeneity, the impact of digital transformation on export product quality is significant for enterprises engaged in general trade or high-tech industries and those with strong corporate governance. In terms of heterogeneity in digital transformation of enterprise and the regional digital infrastructure level, the higher the level of digital transformation and regional digital infrastructure, the greater the impact of digital transformation on export product quality. This paper has practical implications for public policies that offer vital aid to enterprises as they seek digital transformation to remain sync with the digital economy, upgrade their product quality, and drive the sustainable, high-quality, and healthy development of their nation’s economy.