Supply Chain Digitalisation and Corporate ESG Performance: Structural and Resource Empowerment Mechanisms

Enhancing corporate ESG performance through digital technologies has become a central issue as digital transformation and green development advance in tandem. Using data on Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2024, a total of 13,917 observations, this study develops a dual-path framework of structural and resource empowerment from a supply chain network perspective, to systematically uncover the mechanisms through which supply chain digitalisation affects corporate ESG performance. The results show that supply chain digitalisation significantly improves ESG performance (β = 4.4127, p < 0.01), a finding that remains robust across a series of robustness checks. Mechanism analysis further shows that digitalisation generates structural empowerment by increasing firms’ network centrality (β = 0.4036, p < 0.01) and structural-hole positions (β = −0.1668, p < 0.05), and also generates resource empowerment by alleviating financing constraints (β = −0.8366, p < 0.01) and promoting substantive green innovation (β = 0.6263, p < 0.05). Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the positive effect is more pronounced at the planning, production, and logistics stages, in capital- and labour-intensive industries, among upstream firms in the industrial chain, under low environmental uncertainty, and under intense market competition. From a meso-level network perspective, this study extends the literature on the mechanisms underlying corporate ESG performance and provides empirical evidence for firms seeking to align digital transformation with green development.