Associate Professor Xianming Sun, Executive Deputy Director of the Base, has published a collaborative paper titled "The peer effect of digital transformation and corporate environmental performance: Empirical evidence from listed companies in China"  in Economic Modelling.

Abstract:

Enhancing corporate environmental performance is crucial to addressing the global climate crisis. The extant research has explored the factors influencing environmental performance at the macroeconomic level. In contrast, this study focuses on micro-firms and selects a sample of Chinese-listed companies from 2011 to 2021 to investigate how the peer effect of digital transformation impact corporate environmental performance. Machine learning and textual analysis are adopted to measure digital transformation. Environmental performance is measured by corporate carbon emission reduction and the environmental score in the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rating. This paper confirms that the industry and regional peer effects of digital transformation contribute to environmental performance. The industry peer effect of digital transformation can improve corporate environmental performance by promoting innovation, while the regional peer effect of digital transformation can alleviate corporate financing constraints, improving its environmental performance. This paper can serve as a reference for companies to explore sustainable development and for governments to formulate environmental protection policies.

Keywords: Digital transformation; Environmental performance; Peer effects; Corporate performance

Link：https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econmod.2023.106515

Teacher Profile

Xianming Sun, Ph.D., Executive Deputy Director of Innovation and Talent Base for Digital Technology and Finance, associate professor of Financial Engineering Department, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, and master tutor. He was awarded as "Chutian Student" of Hubei Province and "Wenlan Young Scholar" of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. His research interests include Financial Engineering, Financial Technology and related fields. He has published more than 10 papers in important academic journals such as the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of Futures Markets, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, Computational Economics, Statistics and Probability Letters. He is currently leading research projects such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Basic Research Funds of Central universities. The related research has won the Excellent Paper Award of the 16th China Financial Engineering Annual Conference (2017).