Greening through Servitization: Firm-Level Evidence from Chinese Exporters

Reconciling economic growth with environmental sustainability is a critical challenge for developing economies, particularly within their export-oriented manufacturing sectors. Servitization, a key trend in industrial upgrading, offers a potential pathway to address this tension, yet its micro-level environmental implications remain underexplored. This paper investigates the impact of manufacturing input servitization on the environmental performance of exporting firms. We first construct a theoretical framework integrating servitization decisions, pollution emissions, and firm heterogeneity. We then propose a novel firm-level measure of input servitization by merging Chinese firm-level production, customs trade data, and input-output tables from 2000 to 2014. Our empirical analysis yields three main findings. First, manufacturing input servitization significantly reduces the pollution intensity of exporting firms, a result that is robust to a battery of sensitivity checks. Second, this green effect operates through two primary mechanisms: promoting in-house R&D innovation and facilitating the expansion of imported inputs. Third, the environmental benefits are highly heterogeneous; they are driven predominantly by foreign service inputs, while domestic service inputs show no significant effect, and are more pronounced for firms with lower financing constraints. This study provides novel micro-level evidence on how servitization can help developing countries navigate the growth-environment trade-off, offering concrete policy insights for fostering green transformation through industrial upgrading.协调经济增长与环境可持续性是发展中经济体面临的重大挑战，在出口导向型制造业领域尤为突出。服务化（Servitization）作为产业升级的核心趋势，为化解这一矛盾提供了潜在路径，但其微观层面的环境效应仍未得到充分探索。本文探讨了制造业投入服务化对出口企业环境绩效的影响。我们首先构建了一个整合服务化决策、污染排放与企业异质性的理论框架。随后，我们通过整合2000至2014年中国企业层面生产数据、海关贸易数据与投入产出表，构建了一种全新的企业层面投入服务化测算指标。我们的实证分析得到三项核心结论：其一，制造业投入服务化可显著降低出口企业的污染排放强度，该结果通过了一系列稳健性检验；其二，这一绿色效应通过两大核心机制实现：推动企业内部研发创新，以及助力进口中间品规模扩张；其三，环境效益存在显著异质性：主要由境外服务投入驱动，境内服务投入未产生显著影响，且对于融资约束较低的企业，该效应更为突出。本研究为服务化如何助力发展中经济体破解增长与环境的权衡困境提供了全新的微观层面证据，同时为通过产业升级推动绿色转型提供了具体的政策启示。