Digital transformation and pollution emission of enterprises: Evidence from China’s micro-enterprises

Based on pollution emission data and digital product import data of Chinese industrial enterprises from 2000 to 2013, this paper takes enterprise digital imported products as a natural experiment to build a model of multiple phase difference in difference (DID) to investigate the pollution reduction effect of enterprise digital transformation. The research results show that the digital transformation of enterprises can significantly reduce their pollution emissions. The strong persuasive and robustness of the model results are verified by substituting variables, eliminating interference value, excluding other factors, time lag effect and factor sensitivity analysis. When the overall digital transformation level of non-polluting enterprises in the city where polluting enterprises are located is used as an instrumental variable to deal with the potential endogeneity problem, the results still hold. Due to the relatively high level of environmental regulation in the eastern region, the central and western regions undertake low-end manufacturing industries and have limited economic development. So, the environmental governance effect of enterprises in the eastern region is more significant than that in the central and western regions. The strong agglomeration in coastal areas makes the emission reduction effect more significant. The environmental governance effect of enterprise digitization is mainly reflected in foreign capital, collective and large and medium-sized enterprises. Enterprise digitization and technological innovation jointly promote the pollution reduction of enterprises, and enterprise digitization transformation only has the “end treatment” effect.