The Impact of Corporate Digital Transformation on Green Export Quality: Evidence From Chinese A-Share Listed Companies

Digital transformation extends beyond improving firms’ internal operations and serves as a key driver of higher green export quality. By matching the China Industrial Enterprise Database with customs records and text-based data from annual reports, we construct an unbalanced panel of Chinese listed firms from 2000 to 2016. Our empirical results show that digital transformation significantly improves green export quality—a finding that remains consistent across several robustness checks. This positive impact is particularly strong among manufacturing firms, private companies (non-SOEs), profitable entities, and those located in western China. We identify three main channels behind this effect: better supply chain efficiency, improved environmental performance, and stronger green innovation. The study further uncovers important nonlinear policy effects. Specifically, government subsidies show an “inverted U-shaped†effect, where moderate support helps, but excessive subsidies lead to policy arbitrage and reduce real innovation. In contrast, environmental regulations follow a “U-shaped†pattern, suggesting that once regulatory pressure passes a certain threshold, the “innovation compensation†mechanism begins to outweigh the initial cost burden.