Digital transformation and corporate donations from the perspective of legitimacy management

Motivated by legitimacy management framework, we use China's listed companies to test the relationship between digital transformation and corporate donations. Results show that digital transformation can promote corporate donations and contribute to realizing distribution equity. Findings remain robust after the robustness and endogeneity tests. The mechanism includes improvements to external attention, operational efficiency, and information quality. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that this effect is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises and those with a high institutional investor ownership. The results not only help deepen our understanding of the consequences of digital transformation but also contribute to reducing poverty and inequity.