Investigation on how carbon markets and digital transformation affect green innovation: evidence from Chinese listed companies

Abstract Carbon markets and the digital economy are gaining popularity continuously. Under this context, corporate green innovation should be urgently guided, which is an important subject to be studied and solved with great urgency to achieve harmonious ecological and economic growth. In this study, the data of 836 Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2020 are selected, carbon market and digital transformation are integrated into a unified analysis framework, and the green innovation effect and mechanism of the two and their interaction terms are investigated, not showing consistency with the previous studies about the effect of carbon market or digital transformation on green innovation. The present study suggests that (i) both carbon market policy and digitalization level serve as vital factors in boosting green innovation among high-carbon companies, whereas the synthetic effect of carbon market policy and digital transformation inhibits corporate green innovation behavior. (ii) The influences exerted by carbon market policy, digital transformation, and the synthetic effect on green innovation are dependent on property rights, size, and industry of high-carbon companies. (iii) As revealed by the analysis of mediating effects, financing constraints are the main mechanism of action that leads to a negative correlation between the synthetic effect of the carbon market and digital transformation and green innovation. Besides, R&D investment and environmental information disclosure only affect the action mechanism about digital transformation and carbon market policy, whereas they do not affect the synthetic effect of carbon market and digital transformation. Therefore, to promote green innovation and green transformation of high carbon companies, the government needs to flexibly use market-based environmental regulation tools (e.g., carbon market), strengthen the influence exerted by digital technology in improving innovation quality, and flexibly formulate relevant policies in accordance with the heterogeneity of different objects.