IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v16y2024i12p5236-d1418455.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can Digital Transformation Reduce Enterprise Carbon Intensity? An Empirical Analysis of Chinese Manufacturers

Author

Listed:
  • Yu Chen

    (School of Economics and Management, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, Science Avenue 136, Zhengzhou 450001, China)

  • Shuangshuang Liu

    (School of Economics and Management, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, Science Avenue 136, Zhengzhou 450001, China)

  • Yanqiu Xiao

    (College of Electrical and Information Engineering, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, Science Avenue 136, Zhengzhou 450001, China)

  • Qian Zhou

    (School of Economics, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Nanhu Avenue 182, Wuhan 430073, China)

Abstract

Reducing the carbon intensity of enterprises will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, mitigate the negative impacts of global climate change, and protect the ecological environment. To this end, based on the data of A-share listed companies in China’s manufacturing industry from 2012 to 2022, the paper calculates the carbon emission intensity of enterprises, and at the same time, with the help of crawler technology, it crawls the keywords of digital transformation (DT) in the annual reports of the listed companies, portrays the intensity of DT of enterprises, and examines the impact of the level of digitization of enterprises on the carbon intensity of enterprises, along with the heterogeneous role and the mechanism of the role of the level of digitization of enterprises. The results of the study show that the digital revolution notably reduces the carbon emission intensity of enterprises. The inhibitory effect of DT is more significant for non-state-owned firms, industries with high market concentration, and regions with low environmental regulations. The findings of the mechanism test show that DT decreases the intensity of corporate carbon emissions by encouraging green innovation, with substantive green innovation being the main transmission channel behind strategic green innovation.

Suggested Citation

  • Yu Chen & Shuangshuang Liu & Yanqiu Xiao & Qian Zhou, 2024. "Can Digital Transformation Reduce Enterprise Carbon Intensity? An Empirical Analysis of Chinese Manufacturers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-19, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:12:p:5236-:d:1418455
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/12/5236/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/12/5236/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Xufang Li & Dijun Fan & Zhuoxuan Li & Mingzhu Pan, 2023. "The Impact Mechanism of Digitalization on Green Innovation of Chinese Manufacturing Enterprises: An Empirical Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-22, June.
    2. Noordewier, Thomas G. & Lucas, Marilyn T., 2020. "On being green and profitable: Does industry context matter?," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 223(C).
    3. Cheng, Qiongwen & Zhao, Xiaoge & Zhong, Shihu & Xing, Yudan, 2024. "Digital financial inclusion, resident consumption, and urban carbon emissions in China: A transaction cost perspective," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 1336-1352.
    4. Wang, Xiaoqing & Qin, Chuan & Liu, Yufeng & Tanasescu, Cristina & Bao, Jiangnan, 2023. "Emerging enablers of green low-carbon development: Do digital economy and open innovation matter?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(PA).
    5. Munshi Naser Ibne Afzal & Jeffrey Gow & Ashiqur Rahman, 2019. "Economic and Internet Growth Effect on Electricity Consumption in the BRICS Countries," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 25(3), pages 339-346, August.
    6. Dmitry Ivanov & Alexandre Dolgui & Boris Sokolov, 2019. "The impact of digital technology and Industry 4.0 on the ripple effect and supply chain risk analytics," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(3), pages 829-846, February.
    7. Qian, Simeng, 2024. "The effect of ESG on enterprise value under the dual carbon goals: From the perspectives of financing constraints and green innovation," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 93(PA), pages 318-331.
    8. Lin, Boqiang & Huang, Chenchen, 2023. "How will promoting the digital economy affect electricity intensity?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    9. Pan, Yuling & Dong, Feng, 2023. "Green finance policy coupling effect of fossil energy use rights trading and renewable energy certificates trading on low carbon economy: Taking China as an example," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 658-679.
    10. Ying Song & Lu Yang & Stavros Sindakis & Sakshi Aggarwal & Charles Chen, 2023. "Analyzing the Role of High-Tech Industrial Agglomeration in Green Transformation and Upgrading of Manufacturing Industry: the Case of China," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 14(4), pages 3847-3877, December.
    11. Ben Lahouel, Béchir & Taleb, Lotfi & Ben Zaied, Younes & Managi, Shunsuke, 2021. "Does ICT change the relationship between total factor productivity and CO2 emissions? Evidence based on a nonlinear model," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    12. Chen, Huanyu & Yi, Jizheng & Chen, Aibin & Peng, Duanxiang & Yang, Jieqiong, 2023. "Green technology innovation and CO2 emission in China: Evidence from a spatial-temporal analysis and a nonlinear spatial durbin model," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    13. Wang, Jianlong & Wang, Weilong & Wu, Haitao & Liu, Yong, 2023. "Exploring the effects of manufacturing servitization on enterprise energy conservation and emissions reduction moderated by digital transformation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    14. Zhang Dong & Sana Ullah, 2023. "Towards a Green Economy in China? Examining the Impact of the Internet of Things and Environmental Regulation on Green Growth," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(16), pages 1-15, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xiaojuan Cheng & Zihao Zhang & Duojun He & Chunguang Quan, 2025. "Digital Transformation and Corporate Carbon Emissions: Evidence from China’s Listed Companies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(9), pages 1-25, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wang, Bo & Wang, Jianda, 2025. "China’s green digital era: How does digital economy enable green economic growth?," Innovation and Green Development, Elsevier, vol. 4(1).
    2. Lin, Boqiang & Ullah, Sami, 2023. "Towards the goal of going green: Do green growth and innovation matter for environmental sustainability in Pakistan," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).
    3. Zhao, Shuang & Zhang, Liqun & Peng, Lin & Zhou, Haiyan & Hu, Feng, 2024. "Enterprise pollution reduction through digital transformation? Evidence from Chinese manufacturing enterprises," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    4. Ackermann, Klaus & Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Smyth, Russell, 2023. "High-speed internet access and energy poverty," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(PB).
    5. Teng, Yuqiang & Du, Anna Min & Lin, Boqiang, 2024. "The mechanism of supply chain efficiency in enterprise digital transformation and total factor productivity," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 96(PA).
    6. Charfeddine, Lanouar & Umlai, Mohamed, 2023. "ICT sector, digitization and environmental sustainability: A systematic review of the literature from 2000 to 2022," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    7. Boulanouar, Zakaria & Essid, Lobna & Omri, Anis, 2024. "Achieving carbon neutrality in emerging markets: The dual impact of energy transition investments on economic growth and carbon emissions," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 96(PC).
    8. Jing, Peng & Li, Shuohan & Wang, Minglu, 2025. "Digital empowerment, industry chain integration and corporate energy efficiency," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    9. Ran, Qiying & Yang, Xiaodong & Yan, Hongchuan & Xu, Yang & Cao, Jianhong, 2023. "Natural resource consumption and industrial green transformation: Does the digital economy matter?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    10. Tao, Miaomiao, 2024. "Dynamics between electric vehicle uptake and green development: Understanding the role of local government competition," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 227-240.
    11. Yongjian Wang & Fei Wang & Wenbo Li, 2023. "Effects of the Carbon Credit Policy on the Capital-Constrained Manufacturer’s Remanufacturing and Emissions Decisions," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(5), pages 1-17, February.
    12. Chen, Fenglan & Chen, Xing, 2025. "Mitigating pollution emissions of manufacturing firms: Does input servitization matter? Empirical evidence from China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 320(C).
    13. Asmaa Hamdy Abdelaziz Mohamed Elmahdy & Menna Talla Khaled Mohamed Abdelkader & Mina Ayman Mikhaeel Shaker, 2025. "Bridging the nexus between Fintech, operational efficiency and banks profitability: the moderating role of bank size," Future Business Journal, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 1-14, December.
    14. Zhongdong Yu & Wei Liu & Liming Chen & Serkan Eti & Hasan Dinçer & Serhat Yüksel, 2019. "The Effects of Electricity Production on Industrial Development and Sustainable Economic Growth: A VAR Analysis for BRICS Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-13, October.
    15. Zheng, Mingbo & Zhang, Xinyu, 2025. "Digitalization and renewable energy development: Analysis based on cross-country panel data," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 319(C).
    16. Leifeng Zhang & Hui Wu & Yang Shen, 2025. "Unlocking the Digital Dividend: How Does Digitalization Promote Corporate Carbon Emission Reduction?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(16), pages 1-21, August.
    17. Samadhiya, Ashutosh & Yadav, Sanjeev & Kumar, Anil & Majumdar, Abhijit & Luthra, Sunil & Garza-Reyes, Jose Arturo & Upadhyay, Arvind, 2023. "The influence of artificial intelligence techniques on disruption management: Does supply chain dynamism matter?," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    18. Ivanov, Dmitry & Dolgui, Alexandre & Sokolov, Boris, 2022. "Cloud supply chain: Integrating Industry 4.0 and digital platforms in the “Supply Chain-as-a-Service”," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    19. Cheng, Zhen & Ding, Chante Jian & Zhao, Kunqian, 2025. "Energy use rights trading and carbon emissions," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 315(C).
    20. Mei-Rui Zhong & Jia-Yu Fu & Han Zou, 2025. "The data as a production factor: nonlinear effects of factor efficiency on haze pollution," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 8977-9002, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:12:p:5236-:d:1418455. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.