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How to enhance competitive advantage and turn green commitment into practice is a problem that corporates must face under sustainable development. This research examines the impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance on corporate green innovation and the role digital transformation plays in it. We use a panel fixed effects model for empirical analysis based on sample data of 1070 Chinese-listed corporates from 2011 to 2020. The empirical results show that better ESG performance leads to more acquisition of green innovation by corporates. This effect is more significant under the promotion of digital transformation. The role of ESG performance and digital transformation is markedly heterogeneous across different types of corporates. Among private corporates, technology-based corporates, and ecological corporates, the improvement of green innovation by ESG performance is more apparent, and the promotion effect of digital transformation is more significant. Our findings suggest that creating conditions for corporate ESG performance improvement and digital transformation at the macro level and enhancing corporates' subjective willingness for sustainable development and digitalization at the micro level will enable them to develop their green innovation capabilities by leaps and bounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, nations are increasingly focusing on green innovation in their environmental protection efforts as part of sustainable development, and digital finance is playing a vital role in enhancing green innovation. Employing annual data from 220 prefecture-level cities between 2011 and 2019, we empirically analyze the connections among environmental performance, digital finance, and green innovation via the Karavias panel unit root test with structural breaks, the Gregory-Hansen structural break cointegration test and pooled mean group (PMG) estimation. The following four points are the key conclusions: (1) The results support cointegration links between these variables when structural breaks are considered. (2) The PMG estimation outcomes indicate that green innovation and digital finance may have a favorable long-term effect on environmental performance. (3) For better environmental performance and more green innovation, the level of digitalization of digital finance is crucial. (4) The potential of digital finance and green innovation to improve environmental performance has not been fully realized in the western region of China. • The relationship among environmental performance, green innovation, and digital finance is investigated. • The entropy method is used to evaluate the environmental performance. • Green innovation benefits environmental performance in the long run. • Digital finance improves environmental performance through providing financial support to green innovation. • There is cointegration relationship among the three variables after considering structural breaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]