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1. Introduction
The Chinese economy is in a critical period of transformation and development. To promote green economic transformation and high-quality development, the extensive development model of “high investment, high consumption, and high pollution” that has caused severe ecological and environmental problems in the past urgently needs to be changed. Currently, various sectors of society are paying increasing attention to the environmental behavior and social responsibility of listed companies, and the government’s policy support for environmental, social and governance (ESG), which balances environmental protection, social responsibility and corporate governance goals, has also significantly increased. Enterprise ESG, as an important indicator for measuring sustainable development of enterprises, represents the level of sustainable development concepts practiced by enterprises in environmental, social and corporate governance (Munoz-Torres et al., 2019), which has a significant impact on green and sustainable development of the economy and society. To explore how to effectively improve ESG performance of enterprises, scholars have conducted in-depth studies on traditional factors such as national policies (Lu and Cheng, 2023), enterprise scale, enterprise strategy (Rajesh et al., 2022) and R&D investment (Liang and Li, 2023). However, there are generally few studies on how digital factors such as enterprise digital transformation affect enterprise ESG performance (Mu et al., 2023; Hu et al., 2023), and most of them are in the initial stage.
Digital transformation is the foundation of the digital economy and has a significant impact on China’s future economic development. The Chinese Government attaches great importance to the empowering effect of digitalization, and in The Fourteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of The People’s Republic of China and the Outline of the 2035 Long Range Goals, it specifically emphasizes the need to “accelerate digital development and build a digital China”. Therefore, exploring how enterprise digital transformation affects ESG performance is of great contemporary significance. Digital transformation has restructured enterprise management methods and service models, bringing great impact on traditional enterprise management theories, enterprise growth theories, etc. (Hong Jun et al., 2021). It has had a significant impact on improving enterprise innovation capabilities, optimizing internal governance, enhancing enterprise resilience, improving enterprise performance and total factor productivity (Guogao et al., 2022). In addition to the huge economic performance, enterprise digital...