A Sustainable Digital Ecosystem: Digital Servitization Transformation and Digital Infrastructure Support

Abstract

While the notion of digitalization and sustainability has become prominent in current research, more can be done to bridge these two concepts and explain the interaction between them. Plenty of literature has focused on the impact of digital technology applications and business model innovations on environmental performance but has not considered the counterforce of environmental performance on digitalization. We investigated this question from the perspective of digital ecosystem architects to explore more organic relationships. By analyzing data from 1083 listed firms from 2014 to 2019, we found various effective paths for architects to participate in the digital ecosystem and determined that improved environmental performance has led to more efficient convergence. Digital servitization adopted by private architects contributes to financial performance, whereas the addition of digital infrastructure enables public architects to play a greater role. This is reflected in the discovery that firms with “high” environmental performance can improve their financial performance far more significantly with the help of digital servitization compared to other firms. However, digital infrastructure development can benefit all firms almost indiscriminately. We encourage firms and governments to work together to strengthen digital infrastructure, build digital ecosystems, and focus on environmental performance while transitioning to digital servitization.