Synergies between ESG Performance and Financing Cost Control in Advanced Manufacturing Firms in the Digital Era

In the context of the digital era, advanced manufacturing firms exhibit significant synergies between their environmental, social, and governance performance and their cost control in financing. The purpose of this paper is to design an endogenous digital transformation method for manufacturing enterprises and evaluate their digital transformation capability using the entropy weight model. To analyze the relationship between digital transformation and an enterprise’s ESG performance, regression equations are used to collect data. The proposal and demonstration suggest analyzing the synergistic effect between enterprise ESG performance and financing cost control in this manner. The comprehensive ability of digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises shows a steady increase between 2018 and 2023, and the brush transformation ability of most enterprises is measured between 0.064 and 0.076. After fixing industry and time effects, a one-unit improvement in corporate digital transformation is associated with a corresponding rise in ESG performance of 0.0622. Lower financing costs can be achieved through better ESG performance of advanced enterprises that have been digitally transformed. The regression analysis proves the hypothesis that ESG performance is negatively correlated with financing costs. In summary, advanced manufacturing enterprises can achieve more efficient and greener development through digital transformation, and enhance their sustainability capability.