High emissions and excessive resource consumption by heavily polluting firms pose significant obstacles to sustainable development. As a strategic tool, digitalization has shown increasing potential to promote sustainable transformation. Existing studies mainly focus on the relationship between digitalization and green innovation (GI) at the regional level, while firm-level evidence remains limited, especially in heavily polluting industries. Based on information asymmetry theory and stakeholder theory, this study establishes a framework to explore how corporate digitalization (CD) affects the green innovation of heavily polluting firms (GIHPF) through external information intermediaries. Using panel data on Chinese listed heavily polluting firms from 2012 to 2023, we find that CD significantly promotes GIHPF, and the results remain robust across a series of tests. CD enhances GIHPF mainly by increasing investment analysts’ attention (IAA) and media attention (MA), thereby mitigating information asymmetry and strengthening external monitoring. Heterogeneity tests show the effect is stronger for non-state-owned firms, central-region firms, and growth and maturity-stage firms. This study contributes to the literature by providing firm-level evidence from heavily polluting industries and by uncovering the role of external information intermediaries in the relationship between CD and GIHPF. The findings also offer important implications for promoting sustainable development through digitalization.
Ma et al. (Thu,) studied this question.