Abstract
Environmental governance has emerged as a crucial tactic to support the sustainable development of human civilization in light of the serious environmental issues. Meanwhile, during the process of promoting the high-quality development of China’s economy, digital transformation plays a significant role in improving the total factor productivity of the manufacturing sector. We seek to find out whether urban environmental governance has an impact on micro-enterprises, and therefore, the study selects the data of A-share listed manufacturing companies from 2012 to 2020 to study the effect of digital transformation on the total factor productivity of the manufacturing industry and how the effect of environmental governance affects the relationship between digital transformation and total factor productivity. The results unveil that digital transformation can significantly contribute to the total factor productivity of the manufacturing industry. At the same time, digital transformation can promote the high-quality development of enterprises by promoting the fulfillment of corporate social responsibility. Additionally, it is shown that poor environmental governance will weaken the promoting effect of digital transformation on total factor productivity. Furthermore, in state-owned companies and non-heavy polluting industries, environmental governance has a more significant moderating influence on digital transformation and total factor productivity. This study enriches the literature on urban environmental governance and micro-enterprise development, and they support the notion that, from the standpoints of environmental protection and economic development, the level of environmental governance should be continuously optimized and the development of ecological civilization should be strengthened.
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Data availability
The dataset used is mainly collected from the CSMAR database, Hexun CSR report evaluation system, and China City Statistical Yearbook.
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Funding
This research was funded by the National Social Science Fund General Project of China (22BJL047), the Key Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province (2021SJZDA121), the National Social Science Fund Project of Jiangsu Province (21GLB001), and the China Institute of Manufacturing Development Open Project, “Research on industrial intelligence of furniture manufacturing industry.”
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Wei Sun contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Jiahui Fang. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Sun, W., Fang, J. Does environmental governance matter to the relationship between digital transformation and high-quality development? Evidence from manufacturing sector in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 97005–97024 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-29249-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-29249-3