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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1511469
This article is part of the Research Topic Application of Smart Technologies in Optimizing Energy Across Supply Chains View all articles

Does intelligent manufacturing promote a breakthrough in green innovation? Evidence from China

Provisionally accepted
Xiangshu Dong Xiangshu Dong 1*Yongjiao Du Yongjiao Du 1Mengchao Zhao Mengchao Zhao 1*Xiang Xiao Xiang Xiao 2*
  • 1 Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing, China
  • 2 Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Breakthroughs in green innovation (BGI) have become increasingly prominent in spearheading green technology, while intelligent manufacturing (IM) offers a fresh technical paradigm for the manufacturing industry' green development.Yet, due to the limitations in measuring BGI, existing research on IM and BGI has been ignored. By devising a ground-breaking approach to BGI, this paper takes the IM pilot demonstration projects as an ideal quasi-natural experiment and investigates the influence of IM on BGI. We find that IM can effectively enhance BGI which are further validated by a series of rigorous examinations. Further analysis reveals that crowdingin R&D resources, strengthening green open innovation, and alleviating agency conflict play potential pathways in bridging the nexus between IM and BGI. A heterogeneity analysis highlights that IM has the potential to disrupt the technological path dependency observed in high-pollution and high-energy consumption industries. Furthermore, IM can form a joint effect with environmental regulations to promote BGI. BGI driven by IM can also improve both the firm's economic and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance, leading to a 'win-win' scenario for economic performance and green development. Drawing from these findings, we confirm that promoting IM in emerging countries is indispensable for enhancing BGI, which serves as the new impetus for green development.

    Keywords: Intelligent Manufacturing, Breakthrough in green innovation, Green open innovation, information asymmetry, ESG performance

    Received: 15 Oct 2024; Accepted: 08 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Dong, Du, Zhao and Xiao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Xiangshu Dong, Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing, China
    Mengchao Zhao, Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing, China
    Xiang Xiao, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, 100081, Beijing Municipality, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.