Adoption of twin transition technologies in developing countries: A bivariate analysis

Abstract Industrial firms worldwide face two major technological challenges: digitalizing their processes and increasing the environmental sustainability of their production. Both challenges can be addressed separately or in an integrated way. This paper empirically examines the extent to which the adoption of digital and green technologies is done in a complementary way in developing countries’ industrial firms and identifies certain characteristics that tend to be present when such complementarity takes place. It also examines whether these results are consistent with or different from those observed when analyzing firms in developed economies. The analysis is based on a firm-level survey conducted by UNIDO in Ghana, Thailand, and Vietnam. The results suggest that adopting green and digital technologies are interrelated and complementary. The results align with those in developed countries, suggesting that larger green and digital firms and firms in global value chains are more likely to adopt green and digital technologies but differ in foreign ownership.