Guarding the Green Canopy: Effect of Digital Government on the Green Total Factor Productivity of Chinese Listed Forestry Firms

Using the Information Benefiting the People (IBP) policy as an exogenous shock to digital government construction, we investigate the impact of digital government on the Green Total Factor Productivity (GTFP) of listed forestry companies. Drawing on data for China’s A-share forestry firms from 2010 to 2023, our baseline findings reveal that digital government significantly promotes firms’ GTFP, and this result persists across a battery of robustness checks. Mechanism tests show that this effect can be explained by alleviated financial constraints and an increased level of corporate digital transformation; together with heterogeneity analysis, these results reveal both the transmission paths and the boundary conditions of the policy effect. In addition, the effect is more pronounced in small and medium-sized enterprises and in areas with lower levels of financial development and marketization, providing robust evidence for the above mechanisms. Our study offers important implications for the sustainable development of forestry enterprises.