Digital Transformation’s Impact on Enterprise Supply Chain Resilience Toward Sustainability: An Investigation Testing for Threshold and Mediation Effects

Strengthening their supply chain resilience constitutes a strategic priority for Chinese enterprises to respond to evolving globalization patterns and sustain long-term competitiveness in an increasingly sustainability-oriented market. This research systematically measures enterprise supply chain resilience by analyzing panel data from Chinese listed firms (2010–2022) through the tri-dimensional constructs of resistance capacity, recovery resilience, and adaptive creativity. Regression analyses demonstrate that digital transformation significantly improves enterprise supply chain resilience, exhibiting dual-threshold characteristics in nonlinear relationships. Mediation tests reveal that information sharing and resource integration capabilities serve as the critical transmission channels. Digital transformation demonstrates strong predictive validity for both the resistance capacity and adaptive creativity of supply chains. The seemingly paradoxical findings on enterprise operational efficiency highlight the need for a more layered and dynamic understanding of its underlying mechanisms. The positive impact of digital transformation on supply chain resilience demonstrates heterogeneity across state-owned versus non-state-owned enterprises, regions, and industry types. The findings offer actionable insights for orchestrating digital transformation initiatives and designing tiered supply chain resilience frameworks that support enterprises’ sustainability goals.