China is currently facing the arduous tasks of energy conservation, emission reduction and structural transformation, making it of great significance to study the digital transformation of heavily polluting enterprises. As an important informal regulatory system, public environmental concerns affect corporate environmental behavior by increasing external environmental pressure. This study uses the data of listed companies in China’s heavily polluting industries from 2012 to 2020 and Baidu Index data to analyze how public environmental concerns affect the digital transformation of heavily polluting enterprises. This study finds that public environmental concerns can significantly promote the digital transformation of heavily polluting enterprises. For non-state-owned, green image and high-tech enterprises, the impact is even more obvious. Furthermore, based on the structural and hierarchical perspective of enterprise digital transformation, we find that public environmental concerns significantly promote digital technology application. This study puts forward some suggestions for government departments to formulate environmental protection regulations, enterprises to fulfill their green responsibilities and the public to participate in environmental governance.