The Impact of Green M&A Listed Companies’ Size on the Rural Ecological Environment—Digitalization as Moderating Effect

Abstract

In promoting high-quality economic development, environmental protection has become an essential responsibility for the sustainable development of listed companies. This research constructs and measures the level of rural ecological environment in China based on panel data on the rural ecological environment in Chinese inland provinces. Further, the impact of the size of green M&A listed companies on the rural ecological environment and its moderating effect is analyzed. This study uses the entropy method to measure the Rural Ecosystem Index (REI) and STATA software to conduct OLS, 2SLS, IV-GMM regressions, and regressions on moderating variables. This research aims to analyze the impact of listed companies on the environment and explore the role of the digitalization level’s moderating effect. The results show that the size of green M&A listed companies has a negative effect on the development of the rural ecological environment, and the digitalization level positively moderates the relationship between them. The following conclusions are drawn: (1) The average value of the rural ecological index for the 22 provinces in China ranged from 17.32 to 65.17. The index value is higher in the southeastern coastal region, with the highest values in Jiangsu, Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Fujian provinces. (2) From 2010–2020, green M&A listed companies were divided into 14 sectors. The industries with the most extensive green M&A are the raw chemical, non-metallic, rubber, and plastic industries. (3) During 2010–2016, the quantity of green M&A listed companies in China showed an upward trend with prominent regional non-equilibrium characteristics, then gradually declined in 2017–2020. It shows that the number is higher in the eastern coastal areas and lower in the inland regions. (4) The size of green M&A listed companies has a negative impact on the rural ecological environment. This negative impact has prominent heterogeneous characteristics, and the higher the index of the rural ecological environment is, the more significant its negative impact is. (5) The digitalization level positively moderates the size of green M&A listed companies and the rural ecological environment. The positive influence of the size of green M&A listed companies on the development level of the rural ecological environment is more significant in the regions with a higher degree of rural digitalization. In other words, the increase in the level of rural digitalization can improve the negative effect of the size of green M&A listed companies on the ecological environment. Based on the above findings, this paper puts forward corresponding countermeasure suggestions.