The 19th Party Congress report pointed out that "we must adhere to the quality first, efficiency first, the supply-side structural reform as the main line, to promote the quality of economic development, efficiency and power change, and improve total factor productivity". At present, China has entered the stage of high-quality development, under the five major development concepts of "innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing" and the "double carbon" target in China,economic development is required to focus on the unity and coordination of economic, social and environmental benefits. Heavy pollution industries are more obviously affected by environmental changes and policy constraints because of their "high energy consumption" and "high pollution" characteristics and production patterns. In the process of their own development, the daily business activities of heavy polluting enterprises are especially inseparable from the environment and resources, and at the same time they are the main force in promoting social construction and ecological environmental protection,in the pursuit of maximizing economic benefits, to break through development bottlenecks and reach new growth points, as well as to assume the social responsibility of green development, this series requires enterprises to have stable and both efficient productivity. However, the production activities of heavy polluters are accompanied by increasing differences between companies, such as digital transformation and the level of technological innovation, which makes the policy implementation of green transformation much less effective. The implementation of the new development concept requires accurate quantification of the differences in green development of enterprises, and exploring how to improve the differences in total factor productivity growth of enterprises in heavy polluting industries has become a top priority in the 14th Five-Year Plan period. In contrast, total factor productivity fully reflects the distribution of factors and examines the relationship between a series of factors such as economic system, technological progress, innovation and the country's economic growth, and its enhancement has a sustainable effect on economic growth. In this context, improving the total factor productivity of heavily polluting enterprises is the key to induce enterprises to improve their competitiveness and at the same time can inject new impetus to economic growth.
Today, the digital economy, as a new form of general-purpose technology, is deeply integrated with the real economy and has gradually become a new driving force for high-quality economic development. Enterprises use digital technology to provide new channels for driving digital transformation to increase productivity. There are two important influences on the total factor productivity improvement of micro enterprises, internally, there are management practices, IT and R&D, digitalization, commodity networks, innovation, etc,External factors are market, industry and local conditions, such as the degree of competition, technological development, agglomeration economies and specialization (Marchese et al.,2019). H5owever, the implementation of digital transformation itself is the process of using emerging information technology to reform production, operation and service methods to enhance innovation, break time and space constraints, rapidly access knowledge, promote the integration of two industries or reduce costs to improve productivity (Zhao et al.,2021).Thus, it is important to study the impact of digital transformation on the total factor productivity of enterprises. So, can digital transformation become a new thrust for the high-quality development of heavy polluters? Does the digital transformation of enterprises help to improve the level of green technology innovation and corporate social responsibility capabilities, thus benefiting enterprises and ultimately improving total factor productivity?
The available literature on the digital transformation of enterprises and its economic consequences has focused on two main areas: (1) At the micro enterprise level, first, digital transformation can promote total factor productivity through mechanisms that promote the upgrading of the enterprise's human capital structure, improve technological innovation capabilities, increase capacity utilization, promote the integration of the two industries, and enhance the overall operational efficiency of the enterprise (Zhao et al.,2021);Second, since knowledge is one of the most important resources among heterogeneous resources, digital transformation can enhance enterprise total factor productivity by accelerating knowledge spillover among enterprises.Digital transformation can significantly improve the information processing capability of enterprises and facilitate the flow and sharing of information and knowledge elements within the enterprise(Shen and Yuan ,2020),Third, digital transformation of enterprises can reduce information asymmetry, enhance positive market expectations and improve stock liquidity levels (Wu et al.,2021).(2) At the macro effect level, green innovation in manufacturing firms in the context of digital technology application can significantly improve the current market performance of firms. It has been argued that the development of digital economy can effectively promote the development of green technology innovation and urban carbon reduction in cities (Guo et al.,2022),enhancing entrepreneurial activity to empower high-quality development(Zhao et al.,2020).Through combing the literature, we found that the economic consequences of digital transformation are studied more at the micro level, but the level of green technological innovation and corporate social responsibility as transmission mechanisms are not explored, and the economic consequences of the digital economy are analyzed from the macro level, furthermore, there is a small amount of literature analyzing the heavy pollution industry as an object of study.
It can be seen that there is room for further depth in the existing literature on the impact of digital transformation on the total factor productivity of enterprises, the level of green technology innovation has not been examined internally and the mechanism path of CSR with stakeholders has not been examined externally. Enterprises can fully improve the level of green technology innovation and corporate social responsibility through digital technology to provide solid technical support and ability to enhance the production efficiency of heavy polluters. Therefore, this study takes a sample of heavily polluting enterprises, the impact of digital transformation on total factor productivity and the mediating effect of green technology innovation and corporate social responsibility of the heavily polluting listed enterprises in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares from 2010 to 2020 are selected, and dig deeper into the heterogeneous characteristics and mechanistic paths of digital transformation affecting enterprise behavior.
The possible marginal contributions are: ① analyzing and testing the mechanisms by which digital transformation affects the total factor productivity of firms, based on the micro perspective of firms, it clearly shows that digital transformation is based on enterprise green technology innovation to improve enterprise total factor productivity, on the one hand, On the other hand, based on the coordination of external interests with stakeholders, i.e., undertaking corporate social responsibility to improve total factor productivity of enterprises through both internal and external levels, expanding the existing research.②Unlike the existing studies, this paper focuses on listed companies in heavy polluting industries in the context of "double carbon" target, and empirically verifies the impact of digital transformation on total factor productivity of heavy polluting enterprises, which has important social and economic significance.