From trade to green: How cross-border e-commerce drives green technology inventions in enterprises

Cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) represents a digitized form of international business that provides enterprises with an opportunity to enhance their innovation of green technologies. This paper explores the impact of CBEC on the green technological innovations (GTIs) among enterprises by examining China's CBEC Pilot Zone as a quasi-natural experiment. We employ panel data from China's A-share listed companies covering the period from 2011 to 2022 and implement a staggered difference-in-differences model for our analysis. The results of the study indicate that CBEC fosters the GTI and enhances both the quantity and percentage of green patents held by enterprises. These results remain robust after robustness tests and account for the effects of heterogeneity treatment. Heterogeneity analysis shows that this positive effect is particularly pronounced among large firms, non-state-owned firms, highly polluting industries, and firms in inland areas. Mechanism studies demonstrate that alleviating financial constraints and enhancing absorptive capacity are two crucial channels through which CBEC fosters GTI in firms. Notably, absorptive capacity significantly moderates the firm's information advantage, amplifying the effectiveness of this process.