The impact of digital transformation on green total factor productivity of Listed Companies in China

Enhancing green total factor productivity (GTFP) has become a critical pathway towards attaining sustainable development. This paper therefore examines the effect of digital transformation (DT) on GTFP in China, drawing on A-share-listed companies spanning 2011–2019, using the dynamic capability theory. The results show that DT significantly promotes GTFP of logistics enterprises in China. For instance, the coefficients of digital on green patent applications (Green) and the ratio of intangible assets (Intangible) are 0.0450 and 0.0044 respectively, and they are statistically significant at the 5% level. This suggests that DT positively impacts enterprise R&D and effectively enhances the ability to perceive opportunities, which in turn improves the overall GTFP of logistics enterprises in China.Furthermore, the findings indicate that opportunity-perceiving, resource-acquisition and organizational growth capabilities strongly mediate the relationship between digitalization and green total factor productivity. In addition, the study reveals that environmental regulation, institutional investor exit threat and redundant resource structure tend to exert positive impact of digitalization on GTFP, ceteris paribus .This paper not only investigates the effect of DT on GTFP, but also enriches the interdisciplinary literature on digital transformation and GTFP in China and how to improve green efficiency in enterprises as an integral national strategy of achieving high-quality and sustainable development of the Chinese economy.