1. Introduction
China has made tremendous achievements after more than 40 years of rapid economic development. However, the current environmental situation is dire, seriously affecting the quality and sustainability of China’s economic growth and threatening the healthy lives of its people. In response, the Chinese government decided to “vigorously promote the construction of an ecological civilization”, which requires adherence to the basic state policy of conserving resources and protecting the environment. Later, the Chinese government also pointed out that building an ecological civilization is a thousand-year plan for the sustainable development of the Chinese nation, and to this end, it put forward four major initiatives to build a “beautiful China”. The Chinese government also stressed that “the concept of green water and green hills is the silver mountain of gold must be firmly established and practiced, and development must be planned at the height of the harmonious coexistence of man and nature, and the road of ecological priority and green development must be unswervingly followed”. This shows that the Chinese government has raised the importance of ecological and environmental management to an unprecedented level. However, the reality is that digital transformation policies, introduced as a critical initiative to promote inclusive green economic development, often need to be better implemented by local governments in China, resulting in slow progress in resource and environmental management and persistent pollution problems. Against this backdrop, it has become an essential task for China to promote a comprehensive green transformation of the economy, led by the “Double carbon” target. Enterprises are an essential link in the prevention of pollution and the green and low-carbon transformation of the economy. Promoting pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction effects at the enterprise level is the basis for China to achieve this ambitious goal. Existing research also confirms that green technology innovation is essential for companies to improve their efficiency in reducing pollution and carbon emissions [
1,
2,
3]. In the context of the new generation of technological revolution, whether digital transformation, as a new driving force for green technological innovation and factor structure innovation, can help Chinese enterprises to improve synergies between pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction is a critical question that dovetails with the “double carbon” objective at the macro level and has a bearing on whether the transformation and upgrading of enterprises can be achieved at the micro level. We need to study this issue in depth.
Digital transformation has important theoretical significance for enterprises’ green, low-carbon synergistic development. Digital technology provides data-driven decision support and resource optimization mechanisms. Enterprises collect, analyze, and utilize big data in real-time through digital tools to achieve effective resource utilization and carbon emission reduction. Digital transformation promotes cooperation and collaboration among enterprises to optimize supply chains, product design, and production processes through data and information sharing. Digital transformation also promotes a new model of green and low-carbon collaborative development of enterprises in globalization and realizes the cross-border trading of carbon emissions and the construction of carbon markets. Digital transformation provides enterprises with innovative paths to promote the realization of resource efficiency, carbon emission reduction, and cross-border cooperation. It promotes sustainable development and the construction of an ecological civilization, providing new research directions for academia.
In recent years, with the development of digital technologies such as “Internet+”, artificial intelligence, and big data, more and more enterprises have joined the wave of digitalization, to transform their organizational structure, technological innovation level, and business management model through information technology, promoting the upgrading of their elements, reshaping the market competition pattern, and bringing new opportunities. Digital transformation is a new opportunity for enterprises to reduce pollution and carbon emissions. This is because the technological advances and digital communication technology applications embedded in the digital transformation can not only improve the efficiency of enterprises’ production factors and energy use [
4,
5], but also promote the automation of production processes through the upgrading of the automation of the production process, which can also facilitate the “refinement” of the processes of material input, product manufacturing, and sales, enabling enterprises to accurately control the production process while monitoring energy consumption in real-time at each stage, reducing the rate of energy consumption and waste in production, which in turn has positive feedback on the reduction in pollution and carbon emissions [
6,
7,
8,
9]. However, the current academic debate on the pollution and carbon reduction effects of the digital transformation is also controversial, with some scholars arguing that the digital transformation can only deliver limited energy savings and that the use of ICTs can cause a rebound effect leading to increased energy consumption [
10,
11]. Sadorsky [
12] found a significant positive correlation between ICT adoption and electricity consumption as measured by three indicators: the number of personal computer users, Internet users, and mobile phone users.
It can be seen that, given the more mature digital transformation technology in developed countries, more studies have analyzed the pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction effects of digital transformation based on data from developed countries. However, the conclusions reached are not consistent, which may be because the pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction effects of digital transformation require a certain degree of support from the internal and external environments, e.g., enterprise digitization requires a certain degree of policy guidance in order to bring about the enhancement of pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction efficiency [
13,
14]. Due to the new opportunities for digital transformation to reduce pollution and carbon emissions in enterprises and the current academic controversy over its pollution and carbon reduction effects, especially in the Chinese context, there is an urgent need to investigate whether digital transformation in China can synergistically improve the efficiency of pollution and carbon emission reduction and to explore the mechanisms and conditions necessary for it, in order to fill the research gaps in this area and provide targeted guidance for digital transformation in China. The research will fill the research gaps in this area and provide targeted guidance for China’s digital transformation.
An overview of the existing literature shows that although more and more scholars have focused on the relationship between China’s digital transformation and the achievement of the “double carbon” goal, most of them have conducted static analyses based on provincial and municipal level data, lacking the micro-enterprise level and dynamic perspective [
15,
16,
17]. However, in the process of pollution prevention and green development, enterprises are the final link in the implementation of green transformation, and clarifying the factors influencing the pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction of enterprises is the basis for scientific decision-making [
18,
19,
20,
21]. At the same time, it takes time for digital transformation to drive enterprises to complete clean technology iterations, and ignoring the lag in the overall effect of digital transformation in enterprises may underestimate the beneficial impact of digital transformation on enterprises’ cleaner production. Distinguishing from existing research, and based on theoretical analysis, we adopt an empirical approach to investigate the dynamic impact and mechanism of action of digital transformation on the pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction of Chinese enterprises and explore the internal and external factors of digital transformation that affect the effect of pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction to provide more comprehensive empirical evidence for studying the cleaner production effect of the digital transformation of Chinese enterprises from a micro-dynamic perspective.
Compared to existing research, this paper has marginal contributions in the following three areas. First, compared with the international literature that has focused on the impact of digital transformation on pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction efficiency, the corresponding research in China is still in its infancy. It focuses on static analysis at the macro level. To differentiate from existing research, we integrate “digital transformation-pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction efficiency” into a unified analytical framework from the perspective of the micro-dynamic analysis of enterprises, using data from Chinese listed enterprises and matched data from a database of pollution emissions of Chinese industrial enterprises, and measure “pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction efficiency” based on a Luenberger productivity index with a relaxed directional distance function. We measured green total factor productivity, carbon emission efficiency (CEE), and United Emission Abatement Efficiency (UEAE) for Chinese listed enterprises in the heavily polluting industries listed in the List of Listed Enterprises on Environmental Verification and Governance (2008) from 2008 to 2014, and then used these three efficiencies to denote enterprise pollution abatement and carbon abatement efficiency, and combined them with data on the digital transformation of Chinese listed enterprises to test the causal relationship between digital transformation and Chinese enterprise pollution abatement and carbon abatement. In addition, we measured the efficiency of pollution abatement and carbon reduction at the city level in China from 2010 to 2019 for robustness testing. These enrich the research on the economic impact of digital transformation in China. Second, this paper verifies the transmission mechanism of the digital transformation of enterprises to enhance the efficiency of pollution emission reduction and the internal and external environmental influencing factors of enterprises. We reveal the internal logic of the effect of the digital transformation of enterprises to promote pollution emission reduction from two perspectives: the green technology innovation effect and the factor allocation optimization effect. We also explore and analyze the internal and external factors that support the impact of digital transformation on pollution and carbon emission reduction from the perspectives of urban environmental regulation intensity and enterprise product competitiveness. We provide explanatory ideas for the existing literature on the transmission paths and heterogeneous findings of digital transformation’s impact on pollution and enterprises’ carbon emission reduction. Third, we further measure the Synergies between Pollution Abatement and Carbon Emission Abatement in enterprises from the perspective of marginal abatement costs and explore the impact of digital transformation on the Synergies between Pollution Abatement and Carbon Emission Abatement (SPACA) in enterprises. We provide theoretical support and a scientific basis for the coordinated development of digital transformation and the green low-carbon upgrading of Chinese enterprises under the “double carbon” target. We expand and improve the relevant research on the synergistic relationship between digital transformation and enterprises’ pollution and carbon emission reduction.
6. Conclusions and Policy Recommendations
Promoting enterprise pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction is a necessary foundation and key handle for China to achieve the “double carbon” target and green economic transformation. Based on the development of new-generation information technology, this study advances the literature by examining the impact of digital transformation on enterprise pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction in China. This paper uses data from 2008 to 2014 matched between A-share listed enterprises in China’s heavily polluting industries and China’s industrial enterprise pollution emission database, as well as panel data constructed by combining the data of heavily polluting listed enterprises from 2013 to 2019 and the China City Statistical Yearbook, to analyze the impact of Chinese enterprises’ digital transformation. The main findings are as follows: First, digital transformation has a suppressive effect on enterprises’ green total factor productivity, carbon emission efficiency, and United Emission Abatement Efficiency in the short term, but it can significantly promote these three types of efficiency in the long term. Digital transformation can improve enterprises’ resource use efficiency by promoting green technology innovation capability and optimizing their factor allocation efficiency, thereby improving these three types of pollution and carbon emission abatement efficiencies. Second, the effect of digital transformation on green total factor productivity, carbon emission efficiency, and United Emission Abatement Efficiency is influenced by the internal and external environment in which the enterprise is located. In the external environment, the greater the intensity of environmental regulations in the region where an enterprise is located, the more significant the effect of digital transformation on green total factor productivity, carbon emission efficiency, and United Emission Abatement Efficiency; in the internal environment, that is, the enterprise’s characteristics, the competitiveness of its products can enhance the effect of digital transformation on green total factor productivity, carbon emission efficiency, and United Emission Abatement Efficiency. Third, our further research from the perspective of marginal abatement costs found that digital transformation can promote Synergies between Pollution Abatement and Carbon Emission Abatement in the long run, achieving a green and low-carbon synergistic development.
The policy implications of this study for promoting the synergistic development of digital transformation and green low-carbon production in Chinese enterprises are as follows: First, they further strengthen the construction of digital infrastructure and related public services. Local governments can set up funds to support the digital transformation of enterprises according to the development of the local economy and the digital economy and strengthen the capacity building of public services such as enterprise digital transformation promotion centers to help enterprises solve the problems of “not knowing how to transform, not being able to transform, and not daring to transform”, strengthen and promote the will and process of enterprise digital transformation, and provide a favorable external environment for enterprises to improve their efficiency in pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction. Second, enterprises should take advantage of digitalization to tap new dynamic energy. Enterprises should empower technological innovation with digital transformation and make use of the organic integration of digital technology and core business to transform enterprises in all aspects and across the chain, reduce their production energy consumption, improve their flexible production capacity and resource use efficiency, and smooth the transmission mechanism of digital transformation to enterprise pollution abatement and carbon emission abatement production. Third, to give full play to the synergistic effect of digital transformation on pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction, we must pay attention to the supporting role of the external environment, further increase the intensity of environmental regulation, and enhance the environmental awareness of enterprises by carrying out activities to introduce environmental protection laws and regulations into enterprises. At the same time, it is also necessary to build an exchange platform for enterprises based on themselves, learn from each other, and work hand in hand to enhance the competitiveness of their products, reduce the coordination and reform costs of their digital transformation, and promote the synergistic development of their digital transformation and pollution reduction and low-carbon production. Fourth, the findings of this study have important implications for international audiences, researchers, and academics. This study provides valuable insights into the impact of digital transformation on the synergistic development of pollution and carbon reduction in Chinese enterprises. International audiences can compare these findings with their national contexts to understand the potential impacts of digital transformation on pollution and carbon reduction in different environments. They can learn from China’s experience and apply it to their practices in addressing environmental challenges and promoting sustainable development.