Quan Fang

Digital technology innovation is a core driver of sustainable industrial development. However, our understanding of its underlying transmission mechanisms and complex effects remains limited. Based on panel data from 256 prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2023, this study systematically examines the direct effects, mediating mechanisms, and heterogeneity of digital technology innovation on sustainable development performance. Our findings show that digital technology innovation has a significant enabling effect on sustainable development performance, a conclusion that holds even after a series of robustness and endogeneity tests. Mechanism analysis suggests that the impact of digital technology innovation on sustainable industrial development may be linked to digital sharing and Industrial synergy: the former may facilitate the circulation of data as a factor of production and the optimal allocation of resources, whilst the latter may help to generate structural dividends. Together, these two channels may form a potential endogenous mechanism through which digital technology innovation advances sustainable industrial development. The empirical findings outlined above provide evidence consistent with the proposed mediating mechanisms. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis reveals that the impact of digital technology innovation on industrial sustainability performance significantly differs within the “core-periphery” structure; its enabling effect is more pronounced in regions with robust industrial foundations and abundant technological endowments, whereas no significant heterogeneity emerges with respect to geographic location and public data platforms. This study provides new theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence for a deeper understanding of the relationship between digital technology and sustainability.

Corporate resilience has become a critical capability for firms to cope with increasing environmental uncertainties and external shocks. Against the backdrop of the rapid development of the digital economy, this study examines whether digital transformation enhances corporate resilience and further investigates whether environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance serves as a complementary transmission mechanism in this relationship. Drawing on resource orchestration theory, this study uses panel data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2024 and estimates a series of firm fixed-effects models. The results indicate that digital transformation significantly enhances corporate resilience, and the findings remain robust after a series of robustness checks and endogeneity tests are conducted. Further analysis reveals that ESG performance partially mediates the relationship between digital transformation and corporate resilience, suggesting that responsible business practices complement the resilience-enhancing effect of digital transformation. The results of the heterogeneity analysis further indicate that the positive effect of digital transformation is significantly stronger for high-tech firms. In addition, firms exhibit substantial variation in the consistency between digital transformation communication and actual digital investment. Further analysis suggests that greater alignment between digital transformation communication and substantive implementation is associated with stronger resilience outcomes, providing supplementary evidence on the implementation process of digital transformation. This study contributes to the literature on digital transformation and corporate resilience by revealing the resource orchestration process through which digital transformation creates organizational value and identifying ESG performance as a complementary transmission mechanism. The findings also have practical implications for firms seeking to strengthen their resilience and achieve sustainable development in an increasingly uncertain environment.

With the global climate governance development, climate policy uncertainty has shifted as one of the most important institutional factors influencing corporate sustainability. However, existing studies have shown mixed evidence regarding the effects of governance and have paid little attention to the boundary conditions that climate policy uncertainty shapes corporate sustainability. The relationship between climate policy uncertainty and corporate sustainability performance will be investigated in this study using a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2016 to 2025, which is proxy measured through ESG (environmental, social, and governance) performance scores. We utilized a two-way fixed-effects model, including various robustness, endogeneity, and heterogeneity tests. The empirical findings suggest that the uncertainty of climate policies boosts corporate sustainability. Moreover, this positive impact is particularly significant for enterprises situated in southern China, firms engaged in sectors benefitting from industrial policy support and large enterprises. According to this finding, climate policy uncertainty’s governance impact is predicated on the interaction of external institutional settings and firms’ organizational features. By offering a more comprehensive clarification of how climate policy uncertainty affects governance, this study contributes to the literature on corporate sustainability and climate policy uncertainty and advances our knowledge of firms’ sustainability responses in the context of policy uncertainty.

In the context of advocating the high-quality development of companies, this study explores the mechanism underlying the relationship between ESG performance and profit quality (PQ) and the moderating effect of media reputation. Given the wide variety and large number of indicators of corporate profitability, establishing evaluation methods for assessing PQ presents a critical challenge. We adopted the game theory combination weight method to construct a multi-dimensional PQ evaluation system. Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2024, the study applies two-way fixed effects estimation and instrumental variable analysis to test study hypotheses. The research findings indicate that (1) ESG performance and its sub-dimensions positively influence PQ and that (2) media reputation positively moderates the relationship between ESG performance and PQ. We further discovered that different ESG dimensions have distinct effects on various dimensions of PQ. Therefore, this study contributes to the literature on ESG and PQ while providing practical guidance for companies pursuing high-quality development.

Empowering leadership can provide more resource support for organizations and better match the characteristics of current knowledge employees, such as a high demand for autonomy and pursuit of value diversification. However, existing literature has not fully clarified the specific cognitive transmission mechanisms linking empowering leadership to knowledge workers’ job crafting, nor has it sufficiently examined the boundary conditions of this relationship under specific individual traits. This study aimed to explore the impact of empowering leadership on knowledge employees’ job crafting by constructing a moderated mediation model. This study introduces role breadth self-efficacy as a mediating variable and learning goal orientation as a moderating variable and collects questionnaire data to investigate the underlying mechanisms among 338 knowledge employees. Empowering leadership has a positive effect on knowledge employees’ job crafting. Role breadth self-efficacy mediates the relationship between empowering leadership and job crafting. Learning goal orientation positively moderated the impact of empowering leadership on role breadth self-efficacy. Building an empowering leadership model with empowerment and psychological safety at its core can stimulate employees’ job crafting. Role breadth self-efficacy can be improved by challenging tasks and systematic training. The implementation of differentiated management based on learning-goal orientation strengthens the empowerment effect. These measures provide feasible paths for organizations to drive adaptive changes.

Developing countries face the dilemma of balancing economic development with the governance of the water environment. In the 21st century, water environment governance has become a core theme in Chinese society, prompting governments at all levels to introduce numerous policies in this area. However, the effectiveness of governance varies widely across regions. To address the shortcomings of existing research, which often adopts overly simplistic perspectives and lacks explanatory power, this study integrates previous findings on water environment governance, drawing on theories such as structuration and policy implementation to construct an institutional-actor analytical framework. Through a qualitative comparative analysis of the “Five-Water Co-Governance” initiative in 28 counties in Zhejiang, this study identifies four distinct configurations leading to different governance outcomes: the strong upper-pressure and command-dominated type, the strong target-pressure and market-dominated type, the weak-pressure and command-market hybrid type, and the weak-pressure and command-market hybrid type. The revelation of these diverse governance types deepens the understanding of causal pathways in environmental governance and provides valuable insights into water environment governance practices in developing countries.

To further promote rural revitalization strategies and achieve common prosperity, it is necessary to clarify the relationships among public expenditure for agriculture, agricultural green total factor productivity (AGTFP), and the urban–rural income gap (URIG). On the basis of panel data for 30 provincial regions in China from 2012 to 2022, this study constructs a panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model and explores their mutual interaction and influence from both dynamic and static perspectives through the Granger causality test, impulse response analysis, and variance decomposition methods. The research results show that public expenditure on agriculture, AGTFP, and URIG exhibit significant self-reinforcing trends. There is a significant two-way interaction effect between public expenditure on agriculture and URIG, indicating that these factors promote and complement each other. In addition, both improving AGTFP and increasing public expenditure on agriculture can help narrow URIG, but the positive impact of AGTFP exhibits greater magnitude and sustainability. In conclusion, from a long-term perspective, to develop the rural economy and promote rural revitalization, it is necessary not only to increase public expenditure on agriculture continuously, but also to focus on enhancing AGTFP.

Water resources are fundamental to sustaining life, fostering social development, and maintaining ecological balance. This study focuses on Anhui Province (AP) as the research area, employing 22 indicators from the Water-Socio-Ecological (WSE) framework for the water resource-water environment carrying capacity (WR-WECC) of AP. The WR-WECC of AP is assessed via differential evolution projection pursuit modeling (DE-PPM). Additionally, the degree of coupled coordination model (DCCM) is utilized to analyze the coordinated development among the municipalities of AP, whereas the obstacle degree model is employed to identify the primary obstacles affecting the enhancement of the WR-WECC and to forecast them via autoregressive composite moving averages. The findings of the study are as follows: (1) WR-WECC in AP showed a steady upward trend, and the water, socio-economic, and ecological subsystems showed a fluctuating upward trend, with ES increasing the fastest. The overall WR-WECC of each city shows a fluctuating upward trend, and the spatial gap narrows, with Southern Anhui (SA) > Central Anhui (CA) > Northern Anhui (NA). (2) The DCC of the WSE carrying capacity of AP also shows a fluctuating upward trend, gradually transitioning from barely coordinated to well coordinated. The DCC level of the WR-WECC in SA is better than that in CA and NA, and the growth rate is greater than that in CA and NA, whereas the DCC level in CA is better than that in NA, and the DCCs of the three major regions show an upward trend. (3) The degree of obstruction at the criterion level of AP’s WR-WECC basically maintains the following order: WS > SS > ES. In the indicator layer, the water supply modulus, water production modulus, and proportion of tertiary industry are the main obstacle factors restricting the enhancement of the WR-WECC of AP. (4) The prediction results for 2025–2040 indicated that the WR-WECC level and the three subsystem levels of AP showed a continuous increasing trend. Measuring WR-WECC plays a crucial role in regional sustainable development.