How Does the Digital Economy Influence Enterprise Innovation?—An Empirical Analysis of the Mediating Role of Digital Transformation

在数字经济加速重塑产业结构与创新模式的背景下，探讨其对企业创新的影响机制具有重要理论与实践意义。本文以2010~2023年A股非金融类上市公司为研究样本，构建中介效应模型，实证分析了数字经济对企业创新的影响及其作用路径，并重点考察了企业数字化转型的中介效应。研究结果表明，数字经济发展显著提升了企业的创新水平，该结果在控制固定效应、变量替换与滞后变量处理等稳健性检验中依然稳健。同时，机制分析进一步发现，企业数字化转型在数字经济推动企业创新过程中发挥了部分中介作用，主要通过优化资源配置、提升技术吸收与响应能力等路径实现创新绩效的跃升。本文结论不仅丰富了数字经济与企业创新领域的理论研究，也为政策制定提供了现实参考。Against the backdrop of the digital economy rapidly reshaping industrial structures and innovation paradigms, it is of both theoretical and practical significance to explore its underlying mechanisms in driving enterprise innovation. Using a sample of non-financial A-share listed companies in China from 2010 to 2023, this study constructs a mediation effect model to empirically examine the impact of digital economy development on enterprise innovation, with a particular focus on the mediating role of digital transformation. The results indicate that the advancement of the digital economy significantly enhances firms’ innovation performance. This conclusion remains robust after controlling for fixed effects, replacing variables, and incorporating lagged explanatory variables. Furthermore, the mechanism analysis reveals that digital transformation plays a partial mediating role in this relationship, primarily by optimizing resource allocation and improving firms’ capabilities in technology absorption and responsiveness. These findings contribute to the theoretical literature on the digital economy and enterprise innovation and offer practical implications for policy formulation.