Digital transformation is globally pervasive, and exploring how it can shape enterprises' sustainable development is significant. Using the panel data of 710 listed corporates in China from 2011 to 2020, this paper empirically investigates the impact of digital transformation on corporate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance with the fixed effect model and the SYS‐GMM method. The results indicate that digital transformation significantly improves corporate ESG performance, especially environmental and social performance. A looser financing constraint (FC) environment will make the improvements in ESG performance from digital transformation more visible. Among corporates with low FCs, private corporates, and non‐technical corporates, digital transformation has a more noticeable effect on improving ESG performance by easing FCs. Our research presents implications for policymakers and business decision‐makers to achieve alignment between corporate digitalization and sustainability.

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The sustainable development of the water–energy–food (WEF) system has gained global attention as a result of limited land resources, inadequate energy supply and growing water stress. Coordination degree is an important indicator to measure the sustainable development of the WEF system. Improving the coordination degree contributes to the sustainable development of the WEF system and affects regional economic development. The extended Cobb–Douglas function is applied to examine the relationship between coordination degree of the WEF system and regional economic development in 31 provinces of China during the period of 2007–2018. By using the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation, empirical results indicate that in the regions with low coordination degree, improved coordination degree of the WEF system will hinder regional economic growth. In the regions with high coordination degree, it will promote regional economic growth. The results indicate that there is a lag period for the influence of improved coordination degree on regional economic growth. When making resources management policies, shortening the lag period is conducive to achieving sustainable development and promoting regional economic development. Governments of various regions should formulate different resource management policies based on the conditions of each region and the different relationships between coordination degree of the WEF system and regional economic development.

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