IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sagope/v15y2025i2p21582440251340457.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Digital Justice Contribute to Firm Innovation? Evidence from China’s Internet Courts

Author

Listed:
  • Huaxing Wang
  • Weiwei Li
  • Liangcong Fan
  • Yang Feng

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of Internet courts on firm innovation, emphasizing the role of digital judicial protection. Using a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) approach and data from Chinese listed companies, we find that the establishment of Internet courts significantly enhances firm innovation, a result robust across multiple tests. Mechanism analysis reveals that Internet courts promote innovation by increasing firms’ willingness to innovate and accelerating digital transformation. Heterogeneity analysis highlights stronger effects in Internet-related services, industrial digitization sectors, private firms, and firms facing high litigation risks, likely due to their greater reliance on digital justice systems. These findings provide novel evidence linking digital justice systems to firm innovation and offer actionable insights for fostering innovation through judicial reforms in the digital era. JEL: K41, O32, P37.

Suggested Citation

  • Huaxing Wang & Weiwei Li & Liangcong Fan & Yang Feng, 2025. "Does Digital Justice Contribute to Firm Innovation? Evidence from China’s Internet Courts," SAGE Open, , vol. 15(2), pages 21582440251, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:15:y:2025:i:2:p:21582440251340457
    DOI: 10.1177/21582440251340457
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440251340457
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/21582440251340457?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    digital justice; firm innovation; internet courts; judicial efficiency; digital transformation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
    • P37 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Legal

    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:sae:sagope:v:15:y:2025:i:2:p:21582440251340457. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.