Towards green development: The role of intelligent manufacturing in promoting corporate environmental performance

Promoting the intelligent transformation and green development in manufacturing is a vital part of building a modern industrial system. Therefore, the role of intelligent manufacturing in promoting the green development of firms is worthy of in-depth study. This paper takes the implementation of intelligent manufacturing pilot demonstration projects (IMDP) in China as a quasi-natural experiment, and manually sorts out the list companies with IMDP. The difference-in-difference method is adopted to investigate the effect of intelligent manufacturing on the corporate environmental performance. Empirical results reveal that intelligent manufacturing has noticeable improved the corporate environmental performance through increasing investment in environmental protection, expanding human capital and innovating green technology. This confirms the "green dividends" in enterprise intelligent transformation does exist. Further analysis shows that the "green dividends" brought by intelligent manufacturing is more pronounced in non-state-owned, capital market concerned, and large-scale enterprises. This study theoretically reveals the relationship between intelligent transformation and manufacturing's green development, and provides practical guidance for the promotion of national industrial intelligent policy, which enlightens the high-quality development of manufacturing in emerging economies.