Eco-environmental footprint and digital value chains of technology multinational corporations (TMNCs) operating in emerging economies: signalling theory perspective

Eco-environmental footprint and digital value chains of technology multinational corporations (TMNCs) operating in emerging economies: signalling theory perspective. Abstract Drawing from signaling theory and the multinationals global value chain (GVC) literature this study examines a critical question "does eco-friendly technology adoption improve firm value?". In addressing this question, we test a panel dataset for 633 technology multinational enterprises MNEs operating in 15 emerging economies covering ten years from 2009-2019. This paper provides new insights into the increasing CO2 emissions concerns, especially from the emerging economies and household's consumption perspective. Our study revealed that the adoption of eco-friendly technology by MNE's global value chains (GVC) operations will not only lead to an increase in firm value but also increase the total environmental spending and consequently reduce CO2 footprints in emerging countries. Our findings are robust when we control for several firm-level and country-level control variables in our analysis. Practical, managerial and policy implications of our study are discussed.