The driving effect of digital economy on green transformation of manufacturing

Under the double pressure of economic downturn and climate deterioration, the Chinese government needs to use the “double carbon” policy to drive the green transformation of the manufacturing industry. This article takes A-share manufacturing listed companies as the research object, constructs the enterprise digital economy investment index by text analysis and expert scoring method, and represents the degree of green transformation by enterprise green total factor productivity. At the theoretical level, the impact mechanism of the digital economy empowering green transformation in the manufacturing industry is hypothesized. The relevant hypotheses were tested through econometric empirical evidence, and the econometric model significantly passed the robustness test, proving that the digital economy empowers the development of green transformation in the manufacturing industry significantly. This article reveals that the digital economy promotes the green total factor productivity of enterprises by enhancing their innovation capability, improving the efficiency of production factor flow, and increasing their emission costs, but the factor intensity and the nature of enterprise owners will have different effects on the green transformation of the manufacturing industry enabled by the digital economy. This article explores the internal mechanism of green transformation development in the digital economy-enabled manufacturing industry and provides empirical evidence for enterprises to formulate development strategies and for governments to issue guiding policies.