In the era of the digital economy, digital technology brings new opportunities for enterprises’ development. The degree of enterprises’ digital transformation determines their development level and potential. At present, China’s “double carbon” policy is having a profound impact on the industry. The relationship between digital transformation strategy and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance is analyzed based on the digitalization and sustainable development goals of enterprises, and on the basis of positioning enterprise digital transformation level through the strategic alignment model (SAM). Data are collected by questionnaire survey from 224 large manufacturing enterprises in China as a sample for empirical testing by the hierarchical regression method. The empirical results show the following. (1) Digital transformation strategy has a direct positive and significant impact on enterprise ESG performance. Specifically, it is reflected in the two dimensions of digital transformation strategy, namely business digitalization and platform digitalization, which have a significant direct positive impact on enterprise ESG performance. (2) Enterprise green innovation plays a significant intermediate role in promoting the relationship between digital transformation strategy and enterprise ESG performance. (3) The two dimensions of green innovation, namely green process innovation and green product innovation, both play a partial mediating role in promoting business digitalization and platform digitalization development level to enterprise ESG performance, respectively. It can be concluded that business digitalization and platform digitalization can improve enterprise ESG performance by promoting green process innovation and green product innovation. Therefore, enterprises should clarify the direction of development of their digital transformation strategy, emphasize green innovation, and continuously improve their ESG performance to create favorable conditions for achieving sustainable development.

Although the significance of green supply chain management activities on corporation sustainable development has been highlighted in the literature, the potential inter-dependencies between these activities and corporation performance have not been investigated by considering cooperation moderation. The purpose of this research is to examine internal and external Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) activity on automobile performance: Environmental performance, operational performance, positive economic performance, and negative economic performance. Using survey data from foreign-owned company A with 117 manufacturing firms and domestic company B with 94 manufacturing firms, a significant relationship between GSCM and corporation performance has been found. For foreign-owned automobile companies, internal organizational activity has the greatest influence on operational performance, and promotes corporate value and corporation with outside. However, for domestic automobile companies with the advanced green concept, Eco-design exerts the biggest effect on environmental performance, and also brought a negative economic impact on corporate performance. Moreover, although both corporate social responsibility (CSR) and creating shared value (CSV) promotion could influence the corporation with consumers and suppliers, CSV promotion has a more positive influence on cooperation with consumers than that CSR. These findings have important implications for designing GSCM strategic plans for the automotive industry in developing countries.

Green innovation has become an important way for manufacturing enterprises to achieve sustainable development. Existing research on green innovation mostly focuses on conceptual content, and relevant empirical studies only involve individual indicators. Systematic measurement tools are still lacking. Therefore, drawing on the theoretical framework provided by the social-ecological system, a clear definition of the connotations of green innovation and an exploration of the dimensional structure and scale development of green innovation in enterprises are the core objectives of this study. Strictly adhering to the process of scale development, four core dimensions of green innovation in enterprises are identified, and a scale with 18 items was established. The results show the following: (1) The connotations of corporate green innovation should be expanded to include not only technology and product innovation but also internal institutional innovation and external environmental innovation. (2) Green innovation in enterprises should be measured in a rigorous manner, and such measurements should follow the logic from goals to behavior. (3) The scale of green innovation should be refined, and questions should be designed to characterize specific green innovation behavior indicators. In summary, this study lays a foundation for quantitative research on green innovation in enterprises and provides a useful reference for manufacturing enterprises to improve their level of green innovation.

Based on the carbon emission data in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei urban agglomeration from 2007 to 2016, this paper used the method of social network analysis (SNA) to investigate the spatial correlation network structure of the carbon emission. Then, by constructing the synergetic abatement effect model, we calculated the synergetic abatement effect in the cities and we empirically examined the influence of the spatial network characteristics on the synergetic abatement effect. The results show that the network density first increased from 0.205 in 2007 to 0.263 in 2014 and then decreased to 0.205 in 2016; the network hierarchy fluctuated around 0.710, and the minimum value of the network efficiency was 0.561, which indicates that the network hierarchy structure is stern and the network has good stability. Beijing and Tianjin are in the center of the carbon emission spatial network and play important “intermediary” and “bridge” roles that can have better control over other carbon emission spatial spillover relations between the cities, thus the spatial network of carbon emissions presents a typical “center–periphery” structure. The synergetic abatement effect increased from −2.449 in 2007 to 0.800 in 2011 and then decreased to −1.653 in 2016; the average synergetic effect was −0.550. This means that the overall synergetic level has a lot of room to grow. The carbon emission spatial network has a significant influence on the synergetic abatement effect, while increasing the network density and the network hierarchy. Decreasing the network efficiency will significantly enhance the synergetic abatement effect.

Environmental efficiency evaluation is an effective way to assess the synergetic development degree between the economy and environment. In order to realize the mechanism of the effects of urban sprawl and industrial agglomeration on environmental efficiency by using the super efficiency Slacks-based Measure (SBM) model with undesirable outputs, this paper firstly calculates the environmental efficiency of the 13 cities in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei urban agglomeration from 2006 to 2017. Then, based on the panel data of the 13 cities, we empirically examine the influence of urban sprawl and industrial agglomeration on environmental efficiency by adopting the panel Tobit regression model. The results show that large gaps exist in the degree of the cities’ environmental efficiency in the research period, and only Beijing’s environmental efficiency exhibits full efficiency in the 13 cities, with the overall environmental efficiency of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei urban agglomeration presenting a decreasing trend. Additionally, the Tobit regression results indicate that urban sprawl has a significantly negative impact on environmental efficiency, but with the continual improvement of industrial agglomeration, the negative effects of urban sprawl will be partially offset. From the regression results of control variables, economic growth and urbanization developments have an inhibiting effect on the promotion of environmental efficiency. Furthermore, industrial structure optimization and technological innovation are helpful to improve environmental efficiency. The opening-up policy has had a significantly positive impact on environmental efficiency, and the “pollution paradise” hypothesis was untenable in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei urban agglomeration.