Low-carbon transition and digital transformation of enterprises:evidence from low-carbon city pilot policy
The coordinated development of digitalization and greening is required for comprehensive economic transformation and upgrading.The existing literature focuses on the impact of digitalization on low-carbon development but few studies consider how low-carbon transformation affects enterprise digitalization.This paper builds a theoretical model to theoretically reveal the internal logic of low-carbon city pilot policy affecting enterprise digitalization,and constructs a difference-in-differences model to verify the relationship between the two based on prefecture-level city data and listed company data from 2005 to 2021.The results show that the policy has significantly promoted the digitalization of enterprises,and this finding remains stable after a series of robustness tests.However,the impact is significantly different depending on enterprise characteristics,industries,and regions;there is a more significant promotion effect on small and medium-sized enterprises and state-owned enterprises as well as in high-carbon-density industries and regions with greater industrial specialization.The mechanism analysis shows that the low-carbon city pilot promotes the digitalization of enterprises by alleviating financing constraints,promoting green output,and increasing the demand for green products.The cost-benefit analysis shows that the benefits of enterprise digitalization as a result of the low-carbon city pilot are greater than the costs of digitalization.The findings confirm that the low-carbon city pilot brings dual dividends of environmental protection and economic development through digitalization and also support the formulation of policy for low-carbon transformation and digital symbiotic development.
low-carbon cityenterprise digitalizationfinancing constraintsgreening of outputgreening of consumption
万方数据
