Digital twins and resilience as mediators of climate change adaptation: Evidence from the non-renewable energy supply chain in India

Climate change represents a significant challenge for non-renewable energy supply chains. Despite growing attention to climate change, limited research has examined how firms can leverage climate adaptation expenditures to improve supply chain efficiency. In existing literature, adaptation, digital tools, and resilience are often studied independently, with limited attention given to the interconnections among adaptation investments, digital twin technology adoption, and supply chain resilience. The model developed and tested in this study represents a serial mediation model grounded in the resource-based view and resource orchestration theory. The results demonstrate that climate adaptation investments positively influence supply chain management performance both directly and indirectly through digital twin technology adoption and supply chain resilience, including a sequential pathway from adaptation investment to digital twin technology adoption, to resilience, and ultimately to performance. Structural equation modeling was applied to analyze survey data collected from 306 participants in the non-renewable energy industry. The findings of the study indicate that climate change adaptation investments constitute strategic intangible resources, whose benefits are realized when firms develop complementary capabilities in digital twin technology adoption and supply chain resilience. Digital twins can help prioritize, simulate, and optimize adaptation strategies and resilience plans, providing managers with practical guidance for enhancing supply chain adaptability and resilience in the face of increasing climate uncertainty.