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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Will Digital Transformation Empower
Corporate ESG Performance: Moderated
Mediation Analysis through the Prism
of Executives’ Foreign Experience
1
Business School, Soochow University, Jiangsu, China
Submission date: 2024-01-31
Final revision date: 2024-05-20
Acceptance date: 2024-06-05
Online publication date: 2024-09-24
Publication date: 2025-04-04
Corresponding author
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2025;34(4):3893-3907
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
As the digital economy drives corporate financial results, the role of non-financial performance,
such as environmental practices, especially seen through the prism of microscopic levels, is equally
remarkable. Under the dual background of digital economy and double carbon targets, this paper selects
960 Chinese A-share listed enterprises from 2010 to 2021 as research samples, empirically analyzing
the impact of digital transformation on corporate ESG performance and the mechanism between them
based on corporate governance theory, information asymmetry theory, resource-based theory and upper
echelons theory by the two-way fixed effect model and the moderated mediation model. The results
indicate that: (1) Digital transformation can empower corporate ESG performance; (2) Green innovation
plays a partially mediating role between them; (3) Executives’ foreign experience can positively
moderate the relationship between digital transformation and green innovation. These findings remain
robust after a series of tests, and digital transformation has a more significant effect on corporate ESG
performance in eastern and state-owned enterprises.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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