Digital Trade and Corporate Green Technology Innovation
Since the reform and opening-up,China's economy has made remarkable achievements relying on the crude economic growth method of high-factor inputs.However,in recent years,environmental pollution has gradually become a shackle for sustainable economic development.Therefore,achieving environmental protection while safeguarding economic growth has become a challenge for promoting Chinese modernization in the new era.Existing literature shows that technological innovation can effectively protect the environment while promoting economic development,and green technology innovation is significant in enabling the green transformation of the economic system due to its double externality.Meanwhile,scholars have suggested that trade promotes both innovation and environmental protection.Based on this,this paper explores how the change in trade mode will affect the green technology innovation of enterprises in the context of digital transformation.This paper adopts the data of China's A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2022,takes the national comprehensive cross-border e-commerce experimental zone policy pilot as a quasi-natural experiment,and uses the difference-in-differences(DID)model to examine the impact of digital trade on enterprises'green technology innovation.The empirical study shows that digital trade significantly enhances corporate green technology innovation,and this conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests.Further analysis shows that digital trade empowers enterprises to increase green technology innovation by alleviating their financing constraints and improving the quality of corporate disclosure.The results of the heterogeneity test show that for enterprises in non-polluting industries,technology-intensive industries,and high-growth enterprises,the promotion effect of digital trade on enterprises'green technology innovation is more prominent.This paper expands previous literature from three aspects.First,it expands literature on the impact of digital trade on green development.From the perspective of green technology innovation,it combines the environmental and economic effects of digital trade.Second,it further reveals digital trade's"mechanism black box"affecting enterprises'green technological innovation.Combining the unique attributes of digital trade,this paper analyzes the channels through which digital trade affects enterprises'green innovation from the perspectives of financing and information constraints.Finally,this paper analyzes the heterogeneous impacts of digital trade on green technology innovation at the meso and micro levels,including industry characteristics and enterprise nature.This paper expands the internal logic of digital trade affecting sustainable development,which helps the government formulate more targeted policy measures to promote the green development of enterprises in the context of building a digital China and a strong trading nation,and provides policy support for the development of green innovation in different industries and types of enterprises,supporting enterprises to carry out green transformation.
digital economicsdigital tradegreen technology innovationa strong trading nation
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
