Corporate digital transformation and green transformation are the key paths to realizing China's high-quality development, and exploring how corporate digital transformation affects green innovation models holds both significant theoretical value and pragmatic enlightenment. By taking the A-share listed companies in China from 2002 to 2021 as research samples, this paper distinguishes between energy conservation and environmental protection green innovation models based on the IPC Green Inventory and the content of green innovation. This paper empirically examines the influence of corporate digital transformation on the green innovation model selection and its mechanism. The study finds that corporate digital transformation strongly motivates enterprises to select green innovation model, a role that stems from the utilization of digital underlying technologies. The research and development investment of digital greenization plays a mediating role in this process. Market competition, informal environmental regulations and government innovation subsidies can moderate enterprises’ strategies for selecting green innovation models. Further heterogeneity analysis reveals that digital transformation drives corporate selection of energy-saving green innovation to a greater extent in industries that have a greater need for green transformation, such as the manufacturing industry. The results of this paper identify the effect of corporate digital transformation on green innovation model selection at the theoretical level and provide important insights into the coordinated development of Chinese corporate digitalization and greenization at the practical level.

This paper incorporates individual digital literacy into corporate management practice to explore the relationship between managers’ digital literacy and the performance of corporate green technology innovation. The results show that managers' digital literacy can contribute to corporate green technology innovation. Specifically, a greater degree of digital literacy among the top management team is associated with better performance in corporate green technology innovation. Even if the management does not have an educational background in core digital technologies, their work experience related to core digital technologies such as computers and information technology can help promote corporate green technology innovation in the later stage. There is the heterogeneity in the managers' digital literacy role in promoting corporate green technology innovation, which is more significant in the sample of regions with low levels of the digital economy development, sufficient media attention, and non-heavily polluting enterprises. Digital transformation plays a mediating role between managers' digital literacy and corporate green technology innovation. Through further research, we find that the improvement of managers' digital literacy can contribute to the enhancement of corporate value in the future. The conclusions enrich the research horizon of upper echelons theory, explore the value and differentiated effect of digital human capital in the new era, and provide empirical evidence at the micro level that digital technologies promote the green and sustainable development of the economy.

Digital transformation has brought new vitality into enterprises' innovative development. Traditional manufacturing industries have leveraged digitalization to drive technological advancements, thereby promoting corporate green technology innovation and achieving the goal of coordinated transformation toward digital and green development. This paper employs annual data of China's A-share listed manufacturing companies from 2007 to 2020 to examine the impact of digital transformation on corporate green technology innovation and the underlying mechanism of this impact. The results indicate that digital transformation significantly enhances corporate green technology innovation, and this enhancing effect is even more significant in state-owned enterprises and high-tech enterprises. The mechanism test reveals that enhancing digital transformation can not only improve enterprises' information transparency and strengthen positive market expectations, but also encourage enterprises to increase R&D investment, ultimately enhancing the level of their green technology innovation. The empirical findings of this paper can provide valuable insights for government departments to formulate strategies that can promote green innovation in the manufacturing industry, drive high-quality development, and contribute to the achievement of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality targets.

This paper selects China’s A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2021 as the research sample and explores the impact of digital transformation on corporate green technology innovation and the moderating role of corporate competitive position in this relationship. The research findings are as follows: Digital transformation plays a significant role in promoting corporate green technology innovation. The improvement of corporate competitive position weakens the promoting effect of digital transformation on corporate green technology innovation. The moderating effect of the corporate competition position is more pronounced in the enterprises of the eastern and western regions, as well as in the listed companies in the manufacturing industry. The promoting effect of digital transformation on utility model patent innovation is dramatically attenuated when the corporate competitive position is strengthened. However, the weakening effect on invention patent innovation is not statistically significant.

The digital transformation that induces the disruption of traditional production models is as crucial as the green development emphasized during the construction of an ecological civilization. However, there is ongoing debate about whether, and under what contextual conditions, digital transformation promotes corporate green innovation. Using data from A-share listed enterprises on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2012 to 2019, this study employs a fixed effect model to analyze the effect of digital transformation on green innovation and its specific mechanisms. There are four findings. (1) Digital transformation significantly improves green innovation in enterprises. This conclusion is supported by quantile analysis and endogenous treatment based on a multi-period difference-in-differences model. (2) Digital transformation stimulates green innovation by enhancing absorptive capacity and internal control. (3) Industry heterogeneity analysis indicates that, compared with non-state-owned enterprises, digital transformation has a greater positive effect on green innovation in state-owned enterprises. The positive effect of digital transformation on green innovation is significant in technology-intensive enterprises but not in non-technology-intensive enterprises. (4) External context tests show that in regions with stringent environmental regulations, digital transformation significantly promotes green innovation, whereas in regions with weak environmental regulations, its effect is not significant. Furthermore, the positive correlation between digital transformation and green innovation remains largely unchanged as the level of green finance increases.

Digital transformation serves as a new driving force and engine for enterprise innovation. Meanwhile, the national strategy of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality has set new goals and requirements for the green development of the Chinese manufacturing industry. From the three-dimensional perspective of “strategy-resource-institution,” this paper explores the impact and mechanism of digital transformation on green technology innovation of Chinese manufacturing enterprises and the heterogeneous impact of the institutional logic of ownership structure. Using a sample of 1,016 A-share listed manufacturing companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2011 to 2019 and based on big data text mining and a negative binomial regression model, this study finds that: (1) Digital strategy significantly enhances green technology innovation capability of enterprises; (2) digital resource investment partially mediates the effect of digital strategy on the enhancement of green technology innovation capability; and (3) the ownership structure of enterprises plays a moderating role in the mediating relationship mentioned above. Specifically, compared to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), non-stateowned enterprises (NSOEs) show no significant difference in the stages where digital strategy promotes green technology innovation and guides digital resource investment. However, they demonstrate higher efficiency in transforming digital resource investment into green technology innovation. The robustness test indicates that the significant effect of digital strategy and resource investment on green technology innovation in enterprises remains valid in the medium term, with a continuous enabling effect. There is no significant difference between SOEs and NSOEs in the medium and long term in promoting green technology innovation through digital transformation. Further, introducing keyword text networks to explore the structural impact of digital strategy, this study finds that digital product and manufacturing strategy are adequate strategic dimensions to enhance green technology innovation capability, and digital financial strategy and digital marketing strategy have no direct promoting effect on green technology innovation of enterprises. From the perspectives of strategies, resources, and institutions, the research findings elucidate the process mechanisms of digital acceleration in the green transformation of manufacturing and the heterogeneous effect of ownership structure and provide critical theoretical insights into the role mechanisms and contextual factors of digitalization on green innovation in manufacturing enterprises. Moreover, this study offers scientific decision-making support for incentivizing the manufacturing industry to seize the opportunities of industrial digitalization and accelerate carbon peaking and carbon neutrality.