A matter of motivation: the impact of enterprise digital transformation on green innovation

The rapid expansion of digital technology has increasingly challenged conventional knowledge in corporate green innovation. Debate surrounding whether and how enterprise digital transformation enhances green innovation outcomes is gathering pace. However, there remains no conclusive evidence, in large part because the motivation for green innovation is overlooked. Using data from Chinese publicly listed firms between 2008 and 2021, this study explores the impact of digital transformation on the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions of green innovation through the lens of company motivations, distinguishing green innovation as substantive-driven and strategic-driven. The results reveal that digital transformation significantly impacts green innovation by strengthening the resource and knowledge bases, which is consistent with the resource-based view. However, considering the motivations of green innovation, we find that digital transformation positively affects substantive innovation, but does not affect strategic green innovation. We further explore the boundary conditions of digital transformation’s effects on green innovation by analyzing the moderating effect of environmental orientation (EO) and separating EO’s motivations into voluntary-driven and mandatory-driven. The results show that environmental orientation positively moderates the relationship between digital transformation and green innovation and that only voluntary-driven EO has a positive moderating effect. Our findings add new insights to the theory linking strategy decision-making to green innovation performance, with specific regard to firms’ motivations.