Research On Peer Effect Of Digital Investment In Manufacturing Industry And Its Impact On Enterprise Performance

In the era of digital economy,in order to conform to the development trend of digital economy,digital transformation has gradually become the first strategic choice for many enterprises.However,as the pillar of China’s real economy,manufacturing enterprises still generally have problems such as underdeveloped digital technology level and incomplete ability to participate in the digital economy,and they still face many difficulties in resource investment decision-making in digital technology application.The mutual imitation and learning behavior of enterprises in the same group will lead to the consistent behavior of the whole group,which is called peer effect.However,there is little literature on peer effect’s digital investment decision-making of enterprises.Therefore,based on peer effect’s perspective,this paper explores the influence of digital investment of the same group of enterprises with similar products and businesses on individual digital investment of enterprises,which provides empirical evidence for revealing the decision logic of digital investment of enterprises.This paper selects China’s A-share listed manufacturing enterprises from 2015 to 2020 as the research object,and analyzes the existence,heterogeneity and economic consequences of manufacturing enterprises’ digital investment in peer effect from the theoretical and empirical perspectives.Through the theoretical analysis and empirical test of this paper,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)There is peer effect in the digital investment of Chinese manufacturing enterprises;(2)The digital investment of Chinese manufacturing enterprises in peer effect shows heterogeneity in three aspects: the development level of regional digital economy,the intensity of industry competition and the subdivision of industries.The regional manufacturing enterprises with high level of digital economy investment in peer effect is more significant than those with low level of digital economy development.The digital investment of enterprises with high industry competition intensity in peer effect is more significant than that of enterprises with low industry competition intensity.Digital investment in technology-intensive industries is more significant in peer effect.(3)Enterprises’ digital investment in peer effect has a positive impact on short-term market performance and a negative impact on short-term financial performance.On the one hand,the innovation of this paper lies in calculating the text similarity of enterprise annual report through natural language processing technology and identifying the same group of enterprises.Then the peer effect coefficient is identified by spatial econometric model,which overcomes the partial endogenous problem of traditional mean linear model.On the other hand,it analyzes the influence of regional digital economy development level and competition intensity on digital investment in peer effect.At the same time,it further analyzes the influence of digital investment in peer effect on enterprise market performance and financial performance.The research results of this paper provide reference for Chinese manufacturing enterprises to achieve better transformation and development and government digitalization policies:(1)From the perspective of enterprises,Chinese manufacturing enterprises should actively play the role of peer effect,appropriately incorporate the digital investment decisions of the same group of enterprises into their own decision-making systems,and explore a mutually beneficial and win-win digital business model;At the same time,according to the analysis of the economic consequences of this paper,enterprises should not blindly imitate the digital investment decisions of the same group of enterprises,but should take into account the digital investment strength and business results.(2)From the perspective of the government,the government should actively publicize the successful cases of digital investment and transformation and set an example;Vigorously optimize the regional digital environment and strive to narrow the gap in the development level of regional digital economy;Fully understand the industry differences of digital investment in peer effect by different industries.