Digital Transformation and the Corporate ESG Performance: Based on Empirical Evidence from the China Listed Companies

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_65How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Digital Transformation; Enterprise Sustainable Development; Fixed effects Model; Double - Edged Sword

Abstract

Digital transformation boosts economic growth. That is to say, it has the effect of boosting economic growth. But does it help or hurt corporate ESG? It’s not clear. This paper looks at Chinese A - share firms from 2007 to 2024. This research applied fixed - effects models on a sample consisting of about 4,000 firms. Digital transformation makes the environmental performance (E) worse. Nevertheless, it brings about an improvement in social responsibility (S). As for governance (G), it doesn’t experience much change. That is to say, the positive and negative effects cancel each other out. As a result, the total ESG score is not significant. The effects vary according to the type of firm. In the case of non - state - owned firms, they experience more significant environmental damage. On the other hand, state - owned firms demonstrate stronger social gains. Green innovation and financing constraints appear to be the main channels through which these effects occur. However, more in - depth testing is required. This is the first study that examines environmental performance (E), social responsibility (S), and governance (G) separately. The finding of the so - called “double - edged sword” situation, where it helps society while causing harm to the environment, provides new insights for green digitalization policy.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yayun Han
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/30
TI  - Digital Transformation and the Corporate ESG Performance: Based on Empirical Evidence from the China Listed Companies
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 8th International Conference on Economic Management and Cultural Industry (ICEMCI 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 628
EP  - 641
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_65
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_65
ID  - Han2026
ER  -