企业数字化转型促进还是抑制了“走出去”:来自中国A股上市企业的证据

Enterprise Digital Transformation and Going Global:Promoting or Inhibiting? The Evidence from Chinese A-Share Listed Companies

近年来,企业为应对数字经济发展潮流纷纷推行数字化转型,数字化转型的影响及效果备受关注。关于企业数字化如何影响“走出去”在学术界存在一定争议,文章针对该问题展开理论与实证研究。通过建立理论模型发现,当OFDI可变成本小于贸易可变成本时,企业数字化转型会促进“走出去”,反之则起到抑制作用。实证研究采用文本分析法,利用数字化转型关键词词频作为企业数字化转型指数,并使用该指数进行实证检验。实证结果显示,企业数字化转型有利于促进企业“走出去”,并且在通过一系列稳健性和内生性检验后仍然成立。异质性检验发现,企业数字化转型对“走出去”的影响不存在地区异质性,但与企业类型、行业和促进方式有关。进一步研究发现,数字化技术、人工智能与互联网的发展促进了“走出去”,但电子商务的发展则抑制了“走出去”;此外,政企关系在企业数字化转型对“走出去”的影响中发挥着正向调节效应。

In recent years, enterprises promote digital transformation in response to the development trend of digital economy, and the impact and effect of digital transformation have attracted much attention. There are some controversies in the academic field about how the digitalization of enterprises affects enterprises to go global, and this paper conducts a theoretical and empirical study on this issue. A theoretical model shows that when the variable cost of OFDI is less than the variable cost of trade, the digital transformation of enterprises will promote enterprises to go global, and vice versa. In empirical part, we use the textual analysis method and the frequency of digital transformation keywords as the digital transformation index of enterprises, and use this index to conduct empirical tests. The empirical result shows that the digital transformation of enterprises is conducive to promoting enterprises to go global, and it still holds after passing some robustness and endogeneity tests. The heterogeneity test finds that there is no regional heterogeneity in the impact of digital transformation on going global, but it is related to the type of enterprises, the industry of experience and the promotion method. Further study finds that the development of big data, the Internet, and artificial intelligence promotes enterprises to go global, but the development of e-commerce inhibits enterprises to go global;the heterogeneity test finds that there is no regional heterogeneity in the effect of digital transformation on going global. In addition,the relationship between the government and enterprises plays a positive regulatory effect in the impact of enterprise digital transformation on going out.