Can Carbon Emission Trading Policy Promote Enterprise Digital Transformation?
Carbon emission trading policy is an important means of environmental regulation to achieve"carbon peak and carbon neutrality".The operation of the carbon emission trading mechanism has an important impact on enter-prise production and management,strategic development,and technological innovation.Digital transformation is a major change in current enterprise management,which helps managers to have a more comprehensive understanding of the en-terprise operation and cope with market changes more calmly,contributing to the high-quality development of enter-prises.However,existing literature rarely analyzes the positive role of the carbon emission trading policy in promoting en-terprise digital transformation from the perspective of environmental regulations.Therefore,it is of great practical signifi-cance to study the impact of environmental regulation policies on enterprise digital transformation based on the quasi-natural experiment of the pilot implementation of carbon emission trading policy.Based on the above analysis,this paper uses the data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2020 to con-duct a natural experiment based on the carbon emission trading policy,this paper uses the difference-in-differences(DID)model to examine the impact of the carbon emission trading policy on the digital transformation of enterprises and to ana-lyze its mechanisms.On the one hand,the carbon emission trading policy can generate innovation-driven effects,promot-ing digital transformation by encouraging digital technology innovation in enterprises.On the other hand,the carbon emis-sion trading policy can generate financing-driven effects and promote digital transformation by reducing financing costs.The findings of this paper suggest that the carbon emission trading policy promotes the digital transformation of en-terprises in the pilot areas.After conducting parallel trend tests,placebo tests,and robustness tests(including PSM and EBM tests,changing policy implementation time,excluding the impact of other policies,controlling industry trends and macroeconomic factors,changing the measurement method of enterprise digital transformation,and excluding strategic disclosure behavior of enterprise digital information),the above results still robust.The mechanism test results show that the carbon emission trading policy drives the digital transformation of enterprises by promoting innovation in digital tech-nologies and relieving financing constraints.The heterogeneity test indicates significant differences in the impact of carbon emission trading policy on enterprises in different industries and regional environments.Specifically,the driving effect is more obvious in industrial sectors,industries with higher market competition,areas with stronger environmental regula-tion,and areas with higher green finance.The economic consequences test indicates that the carbon emission trading policy can help enterprises achieve high-quality environmental,social,and governance(ESG)performance by facilitating their digital transformation.This paper integrates the concept of green and low-carbon development and the theory of digi-tal economy.It is of great significance to construct a new digital economic governance system under the strategic goal of"carbon peak and carbon neutrality".The contributions of this paper are in the following aspects.Firstly,this paper enriches literature on the economic consequences of market-incentive environmental regulation policies.Existing studies have examined the impact of the car-bon emission trading policy on corporate financial performance,innovation capabilities,and financial behavior.This pa-per,however,examines the impact and mechanism of the carbon emission trading policy on enterprise digital transforma-tion from the perspective of environmental factors'rights affirmation.It integrates the concept of green and low-carbon de-velopment and the theory of digital economy into the empirical research framework,enriching the theoretical framework for the study of micro-economic consequences of environmental regulations.Secondly,this paper supplements relevant re-search on the influencing factors of enterprise digital transformation.Existing literature mainly focuses on the micro-economic consequences of enterprise digital transformation.This paper,from the perspective of macro policy,takes the carbon emission trading policy as the quasi-natural experiment,examines the important role of green and low-carbon policy in promoting the application of digital technology and the development of green transformation of enterprises,and enriches relevant literature on the influencing factors of enterprise digital transformation.Thirdly,this paper identifies the mechanism of the impact of the carbon emission trading policy on enterprise digital transformation and examines the het-erogeneity of the carbon emission trading policy on enterprise digital transformation in different industries and different re-gional environments.
万方数据
维普
