What Drives Firms to Go Green in China? The Role of Digitalization

With the deep integration and development of both the digital economy and the ecological economy, governments, media, researchers and others have begun paying great attention to green digital issues. Yet whether and how digital resources shape corporate social responsibility (CSR) remains unclear. This paper examines the relationship between digital resources, CSR, and environmental performance during a period of rapid technological development, with a focus on Chinese manufacturing enterprises. We draw on structural equation modeling (SEM) to verify how digitalization contributes to more environmentally friendly and sustainable economic development. Our dataset comprises survey data from 174 Chinese manufacturing companies, providing a theoretical basis and empirical support for the deep integration of digitalization with green and low-carbon transformation. The results demonstrate that digital resources significantly promote CSR, which in turn facilitates the improvement of environmental performance. We thus find that CSR plays a mediating role in the digital resources–environmental performance relationship. Consequently, companies can consider greening their innovations through CSR practices as part of the digital transformation environment. Finally, digital resources and CSR contribute to greening innovation in different ways. This study highlights the critical role of robust CSR in driving green performance during digital transformation. It addresses a significant research gap by exploring the synergistic relationship between digitalization and green innovation, emphasizing the strategic importance of integrating CSR to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes for both society and businesses. Additionally, the study identifies deficiencies in existing research regarding the interplay between digital transformation and CSR and investigates how enterprises can directly enhance environmental performance by leveraging digital resources within the context of the digital economy.