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The Impact of Digital Transformation on Corporate Environment Performance: Evidence from China

In recent years, the rate of climate change appears to have accelerated, and digital transformation and environmental performance have become increasingly important in the field of corporate social responsibility. Previous studies have mainly focused on the economic consequences of digital transform...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wang, Lei, Liu, Shibo, Xiong, Wanfang
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9566011/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36232146
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912846
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author Wang, Lei
Liu, Shibo
Xiong, Wanfang
author_facet Wang, Lei
Liu, Shibo
Xiong, Wanfang
author_sort Wang, Lei
collection PubMed
description In recent years, the rate of climate change appears to have accelerated, and digital transformation and environmental performance have become increasingly important in the field of corporate social responsibility. Previous studies have mainly focused on the economic consequences of digital transformation. However, research on the effect of digital transformation on reducing firms’ emissions is relatively rare. This study focused on two kinds of typical environmental pollutants: waste gas emissions and wastewater emissions. Using data on Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2018 and adopting the fixed effect model to investigate the emission reduction effect and mechanism of digital transformation on waste gas emissions and wastewater emissions of firms, we found the following: (1) digital transformation significantly reduces pollution emissions; (2) the relationship is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), high-polluting enterprises, and economically developed regions; (3) to gain a more in-depth understanding of how digital transformation affects the pollution emission behavior of firms, we further conducted mechanism tests and found that digital transformation reduces pollution by increasing total factor productivity and green innovation and improving firms’ internal controls. The above conclusions still hold after a series of robustness tests, including alternative econometric specifications and overcoming potential endogeneity with an instrumental variable. Overall, our findings provide new insights into the effect of digital transformation on environmental pollution emissions. Hence, all governments should pay more attention to digital transformation for sustainable development and improved environmental quality.
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spelling pubmed-95660112022-10-15 The Impact of Digital Transformation on Corporate Environment Performance: Evidence from China Wang, Lei Liu, Shibo Xiong, Wanfang Int J Environ Res Public Health Article In recent years, the rate of climate change appears to have accelerated, and digital transformation and environmental performance have become increasingly important in the field of corporate social responsibility. Previous studies have mainly focused on the economic consequences of digital transformation. However, research on the effect of digital transformation on reducing firms’ emissions is relatively rare. This study focused on two kinds of typical environmental pollutants: waste gas emissions and wastewater emissions. Using data on Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2018 and adopting the fixed effect model to investigate the emission reduction effect and mechanism of digital transformation on waste gas emissions and wastewater emissions of firms, we found the following: (1) digital transformation significantly reduces pollution emissions; (2) the relationship is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), high-polluting enterprises, and economically developed regions; (3) to gain a more in-depth understanding of how digital transformation affects the pollution emission behavior of firms, we further conducted mechanism tests and found that digital transformation reduces pollution by increasing total factor productivity and green innovation and improving firms’ internal controls. The above conclusions still hold after a series of robustness tests, including alternative econometric specifications and overcoming potential endogeneity with an instrumental variable. Overall, our findings provide new insights into the effect of digital transformation on environmental pollution emissions. Hence, all governments should pay more attention to digital transformation for sustainable development and improved environmental quality. MDPI 2022-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC9566011/ /pubmed/36232146 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912846 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Wang, Lei
Liu, Shibo
Xiong, Wanfang
The Impact of Digital Transformation on Corporate Environment Performance: Evidence from China
title The Impact of Digital Transformation on Corporate Environment Performance: Evidence from China
title_full The Impact of Digital Transformation on Corporate Environment Performance: Evidence from China
title_fullStr The Impact of Digital Transformation on Corporate Environment Performance: Evidence from China
title_full_unstemmed The Impact of Digital Transformation on Corporate Environment Performance: Evidence from China
title_short The Impact of Digital Transformation on Corporate Environment Performance: Evidence from China
title_sort impact of digital transformation on corporate environment performance: evidence from china
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9566011/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36232146
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912846
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