Effects of Digital Transformation on Environmental Governance of Mining Enterprises: Evidence from China

Abstract

Digitization offers fresh impetus to the transformation and upgrading of mining enterprises, while on the other hand, the rapid development and broad application of digital technologies make the environmental governance of mining enterprises the most important themes of theoretical research and practical exploration. In this paper, A-share companies listed between 2007 and 2020 are taken as samples to study the influence of digital transformation on the environmental governance of mining enterprises, and its relative acting paths. Our main research methods are multiple linear regression analysis, the panel fixed-effect model and the intermediary effect model. The results show that digital transformation significantly improves the environmental governance of mining enterprises, which is still tenable even after going through a series of endogeneity and robustness tests. It is found via the path test that, by strengthening the supervision of the media, the digital transformation performed in mining enterprises helps improve their environmental governance level, but the comparability of the accounting data shows no significant mediation effect between digital transformation and environmental governance. The heterogeneity test found that the promotion of digital transformation in environmental governance was significant only in non-state-owned enterprises, large-scale enterprises, and mature-growth enterprises. The findings enrich studies on the economic consequences and the environmental governance influences brought by mining enterprise’s transformation based on advanced technologies. This provides an important reference and is of great heuristic significance in promoting digital transformation and strengthening the environmental governance of mining enterprises.