Enterprise Digitalization,ESG Performance,and High-quality Development
Since the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee put forward the five new develop-ment concepts of"innovation,coordination,green,openness,and sharing",the Chinese government has further strength-ened the requirements for companies to disclose their ESG performance by the law.Under the guidance of the concept of high-quality development,the impact of enterprises on the ecological environment and their awareness of social responsi-bility have attracted increasing attention.From the perspective of society as a whole,enterprises should co-exist harmoni-ously with nature and society,that is,they should not only create economic value but also contribute to the high-quality development of society.However,Chinese enterprises are lagging behind foreign enterprises in ESG investment and in-formation disclosure.In the context of globalization,it has become a challenge to further improve the ESG performance of Chinese enterprises.As digital technology is increasingly becoming a new engine for the development of enterprises,the integration and development of the digital economy and the real economy may bring inspiration to this paper.The fur-ther development and application of new-generation digital technologies,such as big data,artificial intelligence,and cloud computing,have made data a new factor of production and ushered in digitization opportunities for enterprises.At present,the digitization of Chinese enterprises is in an accelerated period.Whether it can help enterprises to better fulfill their environmental responsibility,practice social responsibility,improve their governance level,and further promote the high-quality development of enterprises is a new topic that urgently needs to be researched.Therefore,this paper takes Chinese A-share non-financial listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2020 as the research object,forms enterprise data with the help of Flush database,CSMAR database,and CNRDS database,and constructs a fixed effect model to empirically examine the impact of enterprise digitalization on ESG performance and its transmission chan-nels.It has been found that digitalization significantly improves corporate ESG performance.Mechanism analysis shows that the reduction of environmental violations and major environmental emergencies,and the improvement of corporate green innovation are the channels through which digitalization affects corporate ESG environmental responsibility perfor-mance;the enhancement of investor network interaction and the improvement of corporate product quality are the chan-nels through which digitalization affects corporate ESG social responsibility performance;the improvement of the quality of corporate internal and external information is the channel through which digitalization affects corporate ESG gover-nance responsibility performance;and the media attention and institutional investor shareholding can strengthen the posi-tive impact of digitalization on corporate ESG performance.Extended research suggests that corporate digitalization is ef-fective in all three ESG dimensions and firms with good ESG performance contribute to their total factor productivity(TFP)and high-quality development.This paper affirms the social benefits of enterprise digitalization,which is of great significance in promoting enterprise digital transformation and high-quality development.Compared with previous litera-ture,this paper reconstructs the enterprise digital transformation index from perspectives of enterprise digital strategy,digital management,digital investment,and digital results,which can more comprehensively and scientifically measure enterprise digitalization and provide a corresponding system reference for the subsequent measurement of enterprise digi-tal index.This paper also takes into account different theoretical characteristics of environment,society,and governance covered by ESG,and analyses in detail by dimension the impact of corporate digitalization on environmental,social,and governance performance through the channels of"environmental violations"and"green innovation","investor network"and"product quality",as well as"information quality"respectively.
Digital TransformationESG PerformanceInformation QualityExternal SupervisionHigh-quality De-velopment
万方数据
维普
