Policy–technology–finance synergy and sustainable industrial low-carbon transition

Digital transformation is widely recognized as a critical driver of sustainable industrial development and the low-carbon transition. However, empirical evidence suggests that policy-driven digitalization does not automatically translate into improved environmental performance. This study examines whether and under what conditions the interaction among digital transformation, industrial policy, technological investment, and financial support can effectively promote industrial low-carbon transition, with particular attention to the role of policy–enterprise fit. Using a firm-level panel dataset of manufacturing enterprises during a period of rapid digital transformation (over 12,000 firm-year observations), we construct an integrated analytical framework linking digitalization, policy intervention, technological input, and financial support. Fixed-effects models and interaction analyses are employed to identify both direct effects and conditional synergies. The results show that digital transformation, technological investment, and financial support significantly reduce carbon intensity, whereas policy intervention alone exhibits weak and unstable effects. Importantly, a strong policy–technology–finance synergy emerges only when policy instruments are well-aligned with firm-level capabilities. Under high policy–enterprise fit, the joint interaction effect is substantially amplified and statistically significant, while under low fit, policy intervention weakens the emission-reduction effects of digital transformation, indicating a crowding-out mechanism. Further mechanism analysis suggests that information distortion, incentive misalignment, and compliance cost crowding-out are key channels through which policy mismatch undermines low-carbon outcomes. These findings highlight the conditional nature of policy effectiveness and provide evidence-based insights for designing more precise, adaptive, and sustainability-oriented industrial policies to support low-carbon transition in digitally transforming economies.