Artificial Intelligence Application and Resilience of Outbound Direct Investment: From the Perspective of Enterprise Heterogeneity

Artificial intelligence provides new pathways for enterprises to improve overseas investment resilience through its data-driven capabilities, autonomous decision-making, and deep learning. Based on heterogeneous firm theory and utilizing data from Chinese listed companies during 2010–2023, this study constructs enterprise AI application indices and investment resilience metrics to empirically examine the impact of AI on OFDI resilience. The results demonstrate that enterprises with higher AI application levels exhibit stronger resilience in their outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) when confronting economic cycle fluctuations, policy changes, and sudden shocks. Mechanism analysis reveals that alleviating financing constraints, cost reduction and efficiency enhancement, and optimizing resource allocation help enterprises withstand uncertainty shocks, maintaining investment continuity and stability. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that AI exerts greater effects on the OFDI resilience of private enterprises, manufacturing-sector firms, and firms with advanced AI capabilities. Furthermore, AI demonstrates particularly significant effects during economic downturns and in the operational phase of OFDI projects. This research enriches the theoretical understanding of corporate internationalization resilience in the digital economy era, providing empirical evidence and policy recommendations for governments and enterprises to leverage emerging technologies in enhancing foreign investment risk resistance.